Chuck vs Project Omaha
by mxpw
Summary: What is Project Omaha? Chuck leaves on a Nerd Herd call and encounters a man who can answer all his questions about the Intersect, his past, and his future. At the moment, this story is on indefinite hiatus. Sorry.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:** Okay, so I don't know if anybody has really tackled this bit of backstory before, but I figured I might give it a try. It's been a while since I've seen "Chuck vs. The Alma Mater" so who knows if I've even got basic canon facts straight. I'm going to be honest and state from the very beginning that I'm not very sure where I'm going with this, I mean I have some ideas floating around my head, but nothing concrete. So if that kind of uncertainty bothers you, you might want to skip this. Also, this story will have a very non-linear structure to it, which means it will probably be kind of confusing. Sorry. I just thought it'd be neat to screw with time.

* * *

Chuck wasn't sure why he was here. He knew why, but at the same time, he didn't. He knew there was another way. He knew that what he was planning could only be classified as an overreaction. He knew nobody would ever understand. And he was terrified to even face the possibility. 

He stared at it, at the chair. It was like a dentist's chair, faux leather and firm. It was in the reclined position and Chuck brought his right hand up to his face and drummed his fingers against his chin. It was quite possibly the most banal thing he'd ever seen and it terrified the shit out of him. It was sinister, it was impersonal, and it was everything that he had tried so hard to avoid in life. Yet it was only a chair.

"I don't want to do this." Chuck threw the words out there, let them settle around him like falling snow, and then shook them away. They were meaningless words, empty words. It didn't matter that he didn't want to do this, it only mattered that he _had_ to do it.

"I'm not particularly fond of the idea either."

Chuck jumped. He didn't care that it made him look skittish, he was skittish. He spun around on his heel and glared at the graying man behind him. "You should know better than to sneak up on people."

The old man shrugged his shoulders, completely indifferent. "I was hoping if I scared you away, you'd stop this insanity."

Chuck sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. "I only wish running away was enough. We both know it'd only delay the inevitable."

The old man nodded his head only once and walked back to his still swiveling chair. He sat back down and stared at the computer monitor in front of him. His dark and calloused hands settled on the keyboard and began to type.

Chuck let himself become swept away by the rhythmic sounding tap-tap-tap of the keys. He had no idea how it had gotten so bad. Everywhere he turned, another problem cropped up. Casey couldn't be trusted. Sarah was more a stranger now than she'd ever been. The government hunted him. His family was in danger because of him. What was he supposed to do? He wasn't cut out for this life. He didn't know how to make plans, how to be devious and secretive, how to even just fight back. He didn't want this. He spun back around to face the chair.

He figured it was time. If he waited any longer he'd wait forever. Chuck took a tentative step forward and closed his eyes. The room was chilled, but that wasn't why he shivered. He brushed his face again. He took another step forward. He just hoped Sarah would understand why; he needed her to understand even if he'd never know about it. He would have hoped Ellie would understand as well but how could she? How could she know her kid brother was a government asset, that every day of his life was more lie than truth? She'd never even get to properly grieve. That saddened him more than anything. Everything would be gone, and she'd never know why.

Chuck heaved himself into the chair. He settled onto it carefully, tentatively, like he was dipping himself into a bath of too hot water. He had to grow accustomed to it before he could immerse himself in it. It was cool and biting. He sighed and tried to relax; that was impossible. He rubbed his hands along the armrests, testing the fabric, savoring the tactile sensation. He'd probably never experience something like this again. He finally rested his head against the headrest of the chair and morbidly felt like he had just settled himself into his own coffin. He chuckled and shook his head. He was getting ridiculous. He'd never been one for self-pity; he could hear Casey, could imagine his grunt, both parts disgust and exasperation, and hearing a "Stop freaking out like a hysterical girl" or maybe if Casey was being generous he'd get a "Sack up, Bartowski." He stopped his wandering thoughts and waited for some sign that he should stop this.

None came. "Okay." It was all he said, but it meant so much.

The old man swiveled in his chair. "I guess you're ready." It was not really a question, and Chuck didn't respond.

The old man got out of his chair. He pressed a button on the keyboard. He walked over to an austere metal cart and pulled from atop it an electrical bouquet, wires of every type and color. The old man walked toward Chuck, the wires trailing behind him like a jellyfish. He stopped to Chuck's left. "I feel obligated to urge you not to go through with this at least one more time."

Chuck thought the old man sounded almost apologetic. Chuck didn't want his sympathy, it only made this harder. Any hesitation was a risk; it'd taken him far too long just to convince Linus to go through with the procedure. He couldn't have the old man backing out now. "I appreciate the sentiment, Linus, but I'd rather get it over with."

"I just can't believe you actually want to do this."

Chuck snorted and turned his head to his left to stare at the old man. "I don't _want_ to do it, but what other option do I have?" They both knew he had other options, and they both knew those other options were safer, more reasonable, and far less permanent.

It was all choreographed: a perfect routine and an inevitable end. "You could – you could let them take you. It's got to be better than this."

"I was never one for defiance to the end. Sometimes it's better just to go quietly than live in a cage." Chuck shut his eyes at the bitterness in his voice.

"Agent Walker sounded rather confident."

"Sarah has her own problems to deal with." Again bitterness, and again he cursed himself. "It's out of her hands now anyway." It was about time Chuck took control of his own destiny.

The old man loomed over Chuck, his eyes spiderwebbed red and rheumy. There was a concern in his eyes that warmed Chuck. "I wish there was more I could do, some other way I could help."

Chuck reached out and placed a slightly trembling hand on the older man's forearm. "If you did, you'd die." Chuck gave the man's arm a weak squeeze. "Sometimes, Linus, life just sucks."

"Maybe if I hadn't been so preoccupied with what I could do instead of what I should do, this never would have happened."

"And maybe if I'd never met Bryce, none of this would have happened and everything would be different. It's all nonsense, Linus. Who cares?"

The old man sighed and Chuck turned his head back to stare at the ceiling. It was gray, like everything else around him. It was gray and dirty. "Last chance."

Chuck's whole body locked. He couldn't move, he couldn't speak, he could barely even breathe. This was it, his final chance to regret the whole thing and move on. He could forget. He could go to Sarah and she would solve everything. Sarah always took care of him. Then he remembered. Sarah was one of them now; Sarah had more important things to deal with than holding his hand through life. "I'm ready."

"Don't move." The words were whispered and raspy. From the corner of his eye, Chuck watched the old man squirt a clear conductive gel onto the end of an extended q-tip.

"I feel like I should be calling you Frankenstein." The q-tip made contact with Chuck's forehead and he was surprised at the cool feeling.

The old man laughed from deep inside his stomach, the q-tip moving erratically. "It's Fron-ken-steen, not Frankenstein."

Chuck laughed along with the old man's chuckle. It felt good to laugh, made this easier. Chuck hadn't laughed in a while. "I do hope you do a better job than he did."

"Hey, that totally wasn't his fault. Igor screwed up."

"Everyone always blames the sidekick."

"Sad thing is, your brain is the thing that's abnormal. It's a shame I can't just go to some brain depository and get you a nice normal, boring one.

"Thanks a lot, doc. That makes me feel a hell of a lot better." Chuck made a sour face at the old man.

The old man chuckled again, but his laughter faded away into an uncomfortable silence as he slipped back into the detached scientist. This wasn't an occasion for triviality and laughter anyway. The old man resumed work with his gel and the two became quiet. Chuck thought mainly about Ellie. She, more than anyone, would take it the hardest. He was a coward and a bastard. She had done everything for him: raised him, housed him, fed him, and how did he repay her? With more pain than he could ever imagine. His one consolation was that Ellie was the strongest person he knew and would survive. He wished he could be there for the wedding.

"You can still back out." The old man stopped his hand, and then added as if his continued hesitation needed further justification, "You're sweating."

Chuck couldn't help but reach up and loosen a button on his Buy More white shirt. It suddenly felt restrictive and warm. "If only I could." He was wistful and it was a happy feeling. To only imagine he could, that was nearly enough.

The old man sighed and grumbled under his breath. Chuck didn't understand his words, but he understood his tone. "I appreciate your concern, Linus. You have no idea how much."

The old man grunted and started up his work again. "Tell me again the plan for," he hitched his voice just slightly, "after."

"I made a recording; it's on your desk. Just watch it afterward, it explains everything."

"How do you know you can trust him?"

"He's the one that got me out of the holding facility. He feels guilty and he thinks he owes me." Chuck paused and then said the next part reluctantly, "And because he said he would, and I believe him."

"You're a much better person than I am."

Chuck snorted and considered rolling his eyes. "So people tell me." He had always considered being a good person was a virtue, but there had been plenty of evidence to the contrary the last few months to forever dissuade him of that idea. "Trust me, being nice is vastly overrated."

The old man grunted. The first electrode was pressed into place. "There is no coming back from this."

Chuck swallowed and blinked, his eyes a little watery. He gritted his teeth and sucked in a breath at the unexpected pain at the old man's actions. He was using a lean wooden stick to press the electrode especially close to the skin. Chuck's scalp was very sensitive. "Once this is over, they'll never have a reason to come after me."

"They don't need a reason. Believe me." Another electrode was forced into place.

Chuck couldn't comment, as he knew Linus was completely right. Which kind of made what he was doing pointless, but he had to at least _try_. "What are you going to do?" Chuck sucked in another sharp breath. "I mean, after?"

"Take you advice and disappear. Probably destroy all my data."

"All of it?"

"It's the only way to make sure nothing like this happens again."

The old man pressed extra hard with his stick and Chuck lifted his hand to swipe the man's hand away. "Come on, doc, I'm not one of your dummies, go easy on me."

The old man slapped Chuck's hand hard and Chuck pulled it away with a frown. "I said don't move."

"I feel like a piece of cheese." Chuck muttered under his breath and rubbed his injured hand against his thigh.

"Hey, I'm willing to stop if you don't like it."

"No, no, keep going."

The old man continued his work. "You know, this probably won't work."

"Stop trying to talk me out of it, Linus."

"I'm not trying to talk you out of anything; I'm just saying it might not work. It is _experimental_ after all."

Chuck's eyes widened in surprise and lifted his head to gape at the old man. Where was his confidence? He had been assured that the procedure was a sure thing. "What the hell do you mean it might not work? You told me it would work!" This was not good, it was unacceptable. Chuck tried to calm himself; he didn't want to get overly agitated, but he had focused so long on going through with this procedure that the idea that it might not work was unfathomable.

The old man grabbed Chuck's face with a strong hand and guided it back into place. "No, I told you that I was confident it would work, but you're my first victim – I mean patient."

"Oh ha-ha, Linus."

The old man grinned and clucked his tongue. "Relax, everything's going to be okay."

Chuck made himself sit still. He made himself calm. "When it's done, then I'll relax."

"When it's done, you won't have to."

Chuck closed his eyes and let his mind drift. He focused on the whooshing of the cooling system responsible for keeping Linus's mainframe in peak condition. When Chuck had first seen the cobbled together workstation, all thrumming hard drives, monitors, and horsepower, he'd been impressed on a purely professional level. The more time he had spent learning how the system worked, it had turned into every computer geek's wet dream. For Chuck, it became even more: a way out. With the press of a button, everything would be erased, gone; there'd be no more need for bodyguards, clandestine missions, and lies. It would all be gone.

"I'm finished."

"I guess I'm ready."

"Do you want to – I don't know, do you want to leave any messages?"

Chuck wanted to shake his head, but it was too stiff, held in place by the tangled weave of wires sprouting out of his skull. "Already taken care of. Already been delivered."

"He take care of that too?"

"Yeah. He's taken care of a lot of things."

The old man stilled all his movement and moved to the foot of the chair. Chuck watched him cross his arms in front of his chest and cast a disapproving look. "He's your contingency plan, isn't he?"

Chuck swallowed, his throat parched. His tongue stuck to his cheek. "He promised that too."

The old man stared at him for a very long time, his face unreadable. "I'll stick around and make sure too."

"What? Linus, that's not necessary. You should get out of town as soon as it's over."

"Nah, kid, I owe you that much." He sliced his hand through the air. "No arguments."

Chuck sighed. It was all he could do. He then chuckled. It was typical. He had gone out of his way to take control of his own life, and by doing so, he was losing it completely. He couldn't even talk Linus out of being stupid.

"I guess we should get this show on the road."

Chuck raised his hand and held it out into the air. The old man grasped it in a firm grip. "It's been a pleasure."

"Likewise."

The old man perfunctorily spun on the ball of his feet and marched over to his workstation. He sat down and concentrated on his keyboard. Linus assumed what Chuck called his professional voice: dry, emotionless, to the point. "Right now, the system is powering up. In about a minute, I will upload the TR spike and it should execute about a second later. You'll feel a sharp pinch along the base of your skull, don't worry, this is normal. If all goes to plan, you shouldn't feel anything else for a very long time."

Chuck shut his eyes. He began to breathe in and out as evenly as he could. He tried at least. His breaths were coming in ragged and leaving like a gunshot. He was on the brink of hyperventilation, but he couldn't make himself calm down. He didn't want to make himself calm down. This was it. He was really going through with it. No more Ellie, no more Morgan, no more Captain Awesome. No more Intersect, no more Casey, no more running for his life when even the least suspicious person looked his way funny. No more Sarah. He was tired of it all, and he didn't have anymore fight left in him.

The pinch came upon him suddenly. His breath drained into a rasping gasp, his heart constricted, he strained forward in the chair, as if leaping toward some kind of false salvation, then collapsed back into the chair, his breathing gone, his heart frozen, his eyes closed.

Chuck Bartowski was gone.

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**Note:** Yes, I do know that this chapter is slightly confusing. Hopefully, I'll explain it eventually. Don't worry, I'm more confident than I sound. Maybe. Probably. 


	2. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** A surge of inspiration hit today and I decided to punch out the next chapter for this story. It doesn't really get much into the plot, but it does set thegroundworkfor the rest of the story. I also decided to add dates so that you, the reader, will have a less difficult time of keeping the timeline straight. Thanks for your reviews!

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_March 21, 2008_

Sometimes, very often in fact, Chuck Bartowski couldn't stand Charles Carmichael. He was everything Chuck frequently wasn't. Charles Carmichael was confident, he was suave, and he was articulate. He could drink vodka martinis, dance the tango, and drop a $100,000 on roulette, lose, and not worry about the consequences. Chuck couldn't help being a little jealous of Charles Carmichael. He got to wear fancy clothes, and go to fancy dinners and even fancier parties. He got to have Sarah hang off his arm and instantly make any man within a 100 yard radius green with envy. Charles Carmichael was, by all measurable means, much more awesome than Chuck Bartowski ever was.

Tonight, though, was not very often. Tonight, Chuck wasn't envious or hateful or even resentful of Charles Carmichael, because Charles Carmichael was sitting at the bar, nursing a martini, _alone_, as Charles Carmichael was only getting in the way of Sarah shamelessly flirting with the Russian arms dealer over by the craps table.

Chuck didn't even like martinis.

To express his current unhappiness with the world in general (he had earned a 'Woe is me' pity party, damnit), and with the stupid mission in particular, Chuck downed his martini in one swift gulp as if the act itself was a cosmic middle fingers to the Fates, God, whatever sick bastard was in charge of ruining his life. Surreptitiously, which of course was not very surreptitious at all, Chuck looked out of the corner of his eye to see Sarah practically attached at the hip to the loquacious, mountainous man that was Yuri Petronovich. She was talkative, her hand was resting lightly on his upper arm, and she was smiling.

Chuck needed another goddamn martini.

One would have thought that by now, Chuck would have gotten used to seeing Sarah with another man (she certainly expected him to), but Chuck just wasn't wired that way. He wasn't a spy; he was just some schlub who worked at a Buy More for barely more than minimum wage. His best friend was a video game addicted, boundary challenged, gnome-like creature of a man. And he lived with his sister. His life was simple, or at least it had been. Seeing his Sarah, and he couldn't help but think of her as his even if it was painfully obvious that she was most definitely _not_ his, would probably kick his ass for even _thinking_ such a possessive thought (not that he actually thought she belonged to him, he wasn't stupid), and probably never would be his, acting like the sun shined out of some piece of Eurotrash's ass, was enough to drive any man to drink.

So Chuck ordered another martini.

It was so unbelievably depressing. Oh he knew she was just acting, painfully well, and that she didn't mean it, thank God, but that didn't stop the pain, like that would ever happen, and it definitely didn't make him love the job, he'd die first. He had learned his lesson from the embarrassingly tragicomic Kirk incident. He hadn't complained or whined or even gave her the 'hang-dog, looked like somebody just kicked his puppy' look, he'd just headed straight to the bar (because that's where she told him to go) and started drinking. In hindsight, probably not the brightest idea he'd ever had. He could already hear the complaints. First Casey would glare at him with disgust, call him an idiot, and manhandle him into the car. Then Sarah would express her disappointment; oh she would be gentle about it (yet still insistent), but the disapproval and unhappiness would be written clearly in her eyes. But what other choice did he have? It's not like they should expect him to watch everything unfold _sober_. That was just cruel.

Chuck downed his second martini in two gulps.

Sometimes, he wondered why they even made him come on these types of missions. It was all so pointless. What good was a cover as man and wife, or boyfriend and girlfriend, or, dare he even consider, as just fuckbuddies (not that he'd ever think of Sarah in those terms, because she was so much more than that, he wanted her to be so much more than that), if she ditched him at the drop of a hat as soon as they made their mark? What would ever happen if they ran into somebody they knew? There were only so many times you could use the 'It's L.A.' excuse (the 'It's L.A.' excuse being there are more stunningly hot blondes in L.A. than Scientologists (the fall back position being, of course, 'Oh she just has one of those faces' (which in itself was totally ludicrous as Sarah most definitely _did not_ have one of those faces))). Of course, Chuck was willing to concede, that maybe he was biased about the whole thing.

Chuck ordered a third martini.

Yuri Petronovich wasn't _that_ good looking. Sure, he had muscles (but muscles weren't everything), and sure he was rich (small consolation that all his money came from selling weapons illegally), and okay, so he seemed kind of charming (Sarah was being a little too convincing with the touching as far as Chuck was concerned), but damnit, Chuck was nice. Wasn't that what all girls wanted? The nice guy? Chuck groaned loudly and almost rammed his head into the bar top. He only stopped himself from face planting into the mahogany wood by realizing how utterly ridiculous he'd look. And he certainly wouldn't want to draw attention to himself. Not any attention at all.

Chuck took care of the third martini without even realizing it.

He wasn't bitter. He really wasn't. He just didn't like feeling so completely useless. Being told to scram so that the grownups could do grownup work was not exactly an ego boosting experience. What were his alternatives? Wait in the car? Get squirreled away to some undisclosed underground location for the rest of his life? No thank you. At least this way he got to spend "date time" with Sarah (no matter how fake), got to see her in sexy dresses and watch her smile (although not always for him), and be the kind of person he had often dreamed of being. All in all, maybe it wasn't such a raw deal.

Chuck ordered a jack and coke instead.

Things could be worse, he could be Casey. The thought brought a stupid grin to his face (most likely helped by the alcohol) and he sipped on his new drink carefully (he did need to pace himself). Chuck wasn't sure how useful being a valet was, but apparently, Casey's go-to waiter outfit was at the cleaners. Or so Casey had hinted. Chuck figured he was just tired of serving overpriced champagne and barquettes (and other various French crap (Chuck was too uninterested at the moment to remember what delectables were on the night's menu) bathed in truffle oil) to sanctimonious rich people. Maybe it was just the cars.

Chuck stared at the dark brown color of his drink.

He just wanted to go home. He was tired. He'd had a very long day; there were only so many Jeff and Lester schemes a man could foil before he just got fed up with it all (he'd like to know how they even _got_ the washing machine to do that). He hadn't eaten much all day, his sister had been driving him crazy all week about the wedding (he loved Ellie dearly, but she could be so overbearing sometimes), and he thought he was starting to come down with a cold. This was not the perfect recipe for mindless obedience and a happy disposition. He wasn't a professional (as everyone liked to point out to him frequently) so who cares if he decided to rebel a little with help from his friend Jack? He was getting to the point where he was actually willing to risk Casey's ridicule in order to ask him to let him leave. He'd done his job, he'd made his rounds through the swarm of people, and he'd flashed, wasn't that enough? Of course he already knew the answer to that.

Chuck was in the process of raising his drink to his lips when he was rudely interrupted. "You look like you could use a drink."

Chuck looked at the woman to his right, then down to the drink in his hand, and then back to the woman to his right (when had she even sat down?). He blinked and felt his face slacken a little, more than likely conveying to the woman that he was an idiot. He honestly didn't know what to say.

"Ah, not a fan of ironic humor I see."

Chuck barked out a laugh and took a long pull from his drink. He placed it down on the bar and gazed at the woman sitting next to him. He gazed openly and without reservation, far too tired and intoxicated about potentially embarrassing himself at the moment (besides, she had initiated things). "My whole life is based on ironic comedy."

The woman, who Chuck was just starting to realize was rather striking in a dark, somewhat smoldering way, politely laughed. At least Chuck thought she was being polite, he really hadn't been joking. "My name is Eve."

Of course it was. Chuck did a mental inventory: dark hair, check, petite, check, brown eyes, check, seemingly interested, quite possibly check. The exact opposite of Sarah? Most definitely. It was just like Lou all over again, he clearly had some kind of sickness. "I'm Chu – Charles. I'm Charles." Chuck nearly slapped himself silly for making such a stupid move. He looked down at his jack and coke like it had tried to stab a knife in his back and pushed it far away from him.

"Well, Charles, what's got you searching for happiness at the bottom of a drink?"

Chuck looked down at the bar, everything that he had just been railing about coming back to the forefront of his mind after a brief reprieve. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was his normal friendly attitude, but he found himself answering Eve without actually meaning to. "Long day." He smirked and patted himself on the back (not literally, that'd just be weird) for giving such a laconic response. Sarah and Casey would be so proud.

"Ah yes, the long day, the standard response of bar patrons everywhere."

Chuck rubbed a hand along the side of his head and did his best to look at Eve more critically. "I'm sorry, do I know you?" Ever since the Intersect had downloaded into his brain, he'd become much more skeptical of beautiful women expressing interest in him (not that he'd had much experience with them before the Intersect). He tried not to be, but it was hard not to see every potential person as someone who wanted to use him for nefarious purposes.

Eve smiled easily, her eyes bright, and she leaned forward a little bit to place her hand on Chuck's knee. Chuck stared. "I don't mean to pry, but I don't often see men who look as good in a tux as you do at an event like this sitting alone." Chuck blushed. "I told myself, that's a man I need to talk to. So here I am."

"Uh – well, thank you, but I'm not really – I mean, thank you." He wasn't sure why he hadn't mentioned Sarah yet, but he figured the alcohol was impairing his basic survival instincts. Then he thought of what Sarah was currently doing. Then he got angry. It wasn't fair. Was he not allowed the opportunity, the freedom to pursue someone who was actually interested in him? Was Sarah the only one who got to have any fun (if he was thinking coherently, he might have realized that Sarah despised this part of her job)? He was tired of being alone.

"So why are you sitting alone?"

Unfortunately, despite his new resolve to get some, he was still Chuck Bartowski, and he still had Chuck Bartowski's ingrained inability to lie (or at least lie convincingly). "Actually, I'm not here alone." A war was raging inside him. On one side was Horny Chuck, and on the other, Smart Chuck. Smart Chuck was winning the war, but losing the current battle. He knew he had to fight dirty, so he pictured a naked Sarah and everyone was happy. "I'm here with my girlfriend." He loved saying that word, if only he could actually mean it.

"Your girlfriend?" The disappointment was clear on Eve's face, but she quickly recovered. "She's either very confident or very dumb."

"Sometimes, I think it's a mixture of both." Chuck didn't try to stop the bitterness that seeped into his tone.

"Problems?"

Chuck arched his eyebrows and screwed his face into a comical, dumbfounded expression. He almost felt tempted to spill his guts, simply because the woman's curiosity was so unusual. He had become way too comfortable with the people around him keeping everything to themselves that it was actually unusual to meet somebody who was interested in hearing about the problems of someone else. He didn't speak a word. He'd only end up saying that Sarah wasn't his girlfriend, but he was in love with her anyway, that he wasn't really Charles Carmichael the software engineer, but that he often dreamed he could be. Life was far too complicated. "Just your typical relationship drama. Just feeling sorry for myself I guess."

"Well, Charles, if you ever stop feeling sorry for yourself, give me a call." Eve reached for a bar napkin and wrote her number on it, passing it over to Chuck.

Too surprised by the fact that he had somehow picked up a woman without having to actually do anything, he could only just stare at the napkin in front of him. Eve had written her number with a spectacular flourish, and Chuck found it oddly endearing. If only Sarah wouldn't give him an earful for endangering their cover, he might actually consider keeping the napkin and calling her.

He reached out and scrunched up the napkin in his hand. He moved his hand to his pocket and as he was tucking his way inside, a hand landed on his shoulder. Eve was still sitting next to him, so it couldn't be her. Then the hand registered; it was warm and firm, it squeezed his shoulder in a familiar manner. It was Sarah. He looked up and it seemed from this angle that his blonde protector looked even more like an Amazon goddess than usual. He blushed a deep red and averted his eyes immediately; he felt like he had just been caught doing something wrong. He felt like he had somehow just cheated on Sarah by taking Eve's phone number (even though he had every intention of getting rid of it).

"Hello." Sarah sounded exceedingly polite. She had both hands on his shoulders now.

Eve looked decidedly unimpressed. Chuck was suitably recovered enough from his embarrassment to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. If Eve only knew. He felt a flush of pride at knowing that Sarah could kick any ass in the room. "I'm Eve."

"And I'm Emily." Chuck wasted several seconds processing the reason why Sarah was not Sarah anymore. "Charles's girlfriend." There was more than a hint of obvious possession and warning in her voice, but Chuck only assumed she was just acting. Wasn't it always just acting?

"Charles was just telling me about you."

"I was?" He was? Chuck was having trouble remembering exactly what he'd said.

Sarah's grip on his shoulders tightened considerably and Chuck winced. Neither women were paying any attention to him at the moment. So he reached out for his poor, ignored drink and brought it to his lips. It had diluted quite a bit since he last touched it but it still had the desired effect.

"Thank you for keeping him company, but I need to borrow him for a little bit."

Eve smiled sweetly, almost innocently. "That's okay, I've said everything I wanted to say." She squeezed Chuck's knee, got up and leaned close to his ear (Sarah was squeezing extremely painfully now) and whispered to him, "Call me." Eve then walked away.

Chuck was completely bewildered and he couldn't help but watch her leave. It wasn't that he was so enamored by her that he couldn't take his eyes off her, it was just that he had no idea what the hell had just happened.

As soon as Eve disappeared from sight, Sarah swung around and took up the seat Eve had just evacuated. "What the hell were you doing?"

Chuck winced, Sarah was most definitely not pleased. Chuck was both ashamed and angry at Sarah. She had just been flirting with some loser and she was upset with him for doing the same? Totally not cool. "I was just talking. Don't worry, I didn't compromise my cover." He took another drink.

Sarah immediately fixated on the drink in his hand and took it away from him angrily. Chuck knew then he was in big trouble now. "What about _my_ cover, Chuck? Did you even think about that? Or were you too drunk to care?"

Chuck knew she had a legitimate right to be angry, that he shouldn't have been stupid and had so much to drink. But it wasn't like he was drunk; he knew what he was doing and what he was saying (for the most part). He was not a total incompetent moron, at least not anymore, and he knew enough to keep his mouth shut. He couldn't screw up if he never said anything. And he hadn't said anything incriminating (he was pretty sure). It wasn't fair for Sarah to get mad at him. She had sent him here, he hadn't wanted to go to the bar, but she had insisted, and now she was angry with him for drinking? He couldn't believe that she really thought that he would ever do anything to put her in danger. He would die first. "I didn't say anything. She was just flirting with me."

"You have no idea who she is."

"Neither do you!" Chuck frowned; his retort had come out a little too loud.

Sarah looked like she was about to continue arguing with him, but quickly shut her mouth. She stood up, grabbed his arm, and pulled him off the stool. "Come on, let's get you home."

Chuck only wanted to go home if Sarah was going to be coming with him. But he was exhausted, and his stomach was just starting to bother him, and he knew how pointless it would be to argue with her anymore. He just nodded his head and let her lead him outside.


	3. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Thank you for the reviews! I know that this story can't be easy to get into, so I appreciate any and all comments. I'm not sure if this chapter works or not. I feel like the situation with Sarah is almost too artificial. I'd like to know what others think.

* * *

_March 22, 2008_

Chuck's chin rested on the palm of his hand as he sat staring blankly at a spot on the Buy More floor. He was sitting at his station, doing everything he could think of to stay awake. It was Saturday morning and the Buy More was uncharacteristically empty. Chuck was relieved. He felt terrible, he _looked_ terrible. When he'd woken up and looked at himself in the mirror, he'd been shocked by what he saw. His eyes were red and slightly swollen, his forehead clammy and warm, his face was pale and his skin looked lifeless, and his throat was killing him. It wasn't a hangover. Although it'd been some time since he had experienced one of those, he knew it wasn't a hangover. The alcohol he had the night before had only exacerbated the fact that he obviously wasn't feeling well. He'd taken four aspirin right there on the spot. He had been breaking out in hot and cold sweats ever since, as his building fever broke and returned at whim.

He had desperately wanted to stay home and wallow in self-loathing. Partly mortified with embarrassment over how he had acted the night before, and partly on the brink of throwing up at a moment's notice, the last place he had wanted to be was work. Work meant Jeff and Lester, it meant Big Mike attempting to impart sage, motivational wisdom (that was neither sage nor motivational, unless an appeal to increased productivity counted as motivational), it meant idiotic customers that didn't know a USB port from an Ethernet connection, and worst of all, work meant Casey. It meant he was only a few hundred feet from Sarah. It meant he'd never get any peace for what he'd done.

Okay, he was an amateur. He deserved that. Okay, he had screwed up by putting all their covers at risk. Yeah, he deserved that too. And okay, he had lost sight of the big picture. He even deserved that. But Jesus, it wasn't like Sarah or Casey hadn't done some questionable things while on mission themselves. It was not even remotely fair. He hadn't let little Chuck guide his actions and he hadn't said a single compromising word and he hadn't forgotten all about Sarah. He definitely didn't deserve that. Why couldn't they just let it go?

Chuck lifted his eyes (he couldn't lift his head) and scanned the sales floor. Casey, tall and stiff as a statue, was looming over some poor soul near the flat screens. Chuck had studied the man enough to know that he was doing his best to cover up that he was still pissed as hell and wanted to hit something (or someone). It had gone just as he predicted at the bar. Casey had grabbed him by his collar and nearly dragged him out of the hotel lobby, muttering at him in an even-keeled tone that had scared the crap out of him. He called him an idiot (along with a few other choice words) and tossed him in the backseat of the car. Then they drove back to the apartment complex, Casey glaring at him in the rearview mirror the entire way (Chuck was fairly certain Casey had only looked at the road twice for the whole trip). That had been bad enough, and he had been expecting it, but it had done noting to prepare him for Sarah's reaction.

At first, she had been Sarah. She had climbed into the backseat alongside him (it was one of the few times where they all traveled together) and had grabbed his hand. He felt frustrated and more than a little sick, and the feel of her warm hand against his had been comforting. She had pulled him close and whispered soft, unintelligible words (he probably just didn't remember them) into his ear, and rubbed his back soothingly. He had felt instantly better as soon as she started touching him, his stupidity a distant memory, Casey's actions water under the bridge, and his interaction with Eve nothing but a hazy thought hovering just beyond reach. Then they arrived home. And then Sarah became Agent Walker.

She sat him down on the foot of his bed. He wondered how he must have looked to her, his tuxedo in complete disarray, his hair wild, and his face conveying both nausea and confusion. She started to pace, arms tightly crossed in front of her chest, and her face completely unreadable. She was the cold, emotionless, detached agent that Chuck almost never saw. He was so used to her gentle words and her small smiles and her absentminded touches. He had never really experienced Agent Walker the way he was seeing her now. Even from the very beginning, before either of them knew each other, she had always shown him her softer side. Chuck was aware of things enough to know that she did this because she knew he'd respond to her better that way, but that didn't stop him from loving every moment he got to spend with her, the person he thought of as the _real_ Sarah. Every once in a while, for a precious few seconds, he would even forget that she was not a normal girl. It was those moments that he valued most since he'd come to know her.

Chuck protested and tried to stand up, but she had quickly pushed him back down onto the bed. She shook her head at him and glared. She proceeded to chew his ass out with increasing intensity. Her voice grew louder and more accusing when she mentioned Eve. Chuck tried to tell her how sorry he was and that he hadn't done anything stupid. He had compared Eve to Lou (in retrospect, probably not a good idea) and had tried to reason that she had been okay with him dating the sandwich maker, so how was this different? She had only cut him off and insisted that it was different, but wouldn't give him a clear explanation why. Chuck knew enough at that point, even through the haze, to not argue with her further. Sarah continued to make her disappointment and displeasure with him very apparent for the next 10 minutes. Chuck hadn't felt as bad as he did that night since he'd learned the full extent of the Intersect and how his life had just effectively ended (but even then he had the benefit of meeting Sarah). Agent Walker was doing everything possible to disabuse him of the notion that she had ever been anything but a CIA agent assigned to protect the Intersect.

He had no idea why she was taking things so seriously. He had screwed up, big deal. It was certainly not the first time he'd ever messed up on a mission, and it was pretty likely that it wouldn't be the last. She had never gotten upset like this. She was acting like he had just confessed the country's most important secrets to a member of the VEVAK or Al-Queda. It was only making him feel even worse, and without a warning to Sarah, he had leapt off his bed and ran to the bathroom, throwing up in the toilet. He was in there for so long he nearly forgot about everything they'd been fighting about. He had the presence of mind to quickly brush his teeth before he reentered his room. Sarah was gone.

He stared around his room, confused and surprised. She must have been really pissed off at him to just leave without a word. That wasn't like Sarah. She walked through his bedroom door, holding a glass of water in one hand and a collection of pills in her other hand. She gave him both, told him to drink the whole glass, and then said that he needed to rest and they would continue their conversation later. Chuck was just relieved that she hadn't left him and that he could finally get some sleep. He mumbled goodnight and she was gone again.

Chuck's eyes slowly closed, his chin slipped off his hand, and he immediately jerked awake with a violent start. His limbs flailed around, knocking a stapler to the floor. He winced at the sudden pain in his hand and forlornly picked up the stapler. Falling asleep on the job was dangerous. He was setting such a bad example. At the moment, he didn't care though. Chuck looked down at his watch and perked up slightly at the time. It was about time for his lunch break. He had planned it all out on his way to work that morning. He would go on lunch, apologize first to Casey (who probably wouldn't care) and then head to Wiernerlicious to beg for forgiveness if need be.

He passed Lester on his way over to Casey and told him he was going to lunch and that he needed to man the Nerd Herd station. Lester looked at him like he had just told him to shove an iPod up his ass (Chuck blanched at the mental image that unwillingly burst into his head). Chuck stared at Lester until he started moving and then continued on his way toward Casey.

Casey was trolling the aisles, looking for potential new sales. When he caught sight of Chuck walking his way, he pulled up straight, and scowled. "What do you want, Bartowski?"

Chuck sighed and rubbed the back of his head. He tried not to look so pathetic but it was hard, Casey had that affect on him. "Uh – well, I just wanted to say sorry for last night."

"Do I look like I care if you're sorry or not?"

"Yeah, I kinda figured as much. Still, I just wanted you to know that I know I'm an idiot."

"You'll get no argument from me."

"Yeah – " Chuck just kind of trailed off, shifting his feet and stuffing his hands into his pockets. He wished there was some way he could make this better. He knew that Casey didn't care that much; he only cared to the extent that it affected the mission. And he knew that in a day or two Casey would go back to just growling at him for normal reasons, but he didn't like having the imposing agent so disappointed in him. He didn't like to admit it, but Casey's opinion mattered to him (at least most of the time). He thought it was because it was so hard to gain Casey's approval, that doing so was a true achievement.

Casey poked him hard in the upper chest. "Don't let it happen again or it'll be me that helps your drunken ass home instead of Walker."

"Right." Chuck swallowed and moved as if he was going to leave but he stopped himself at the last second. "I really am sorry. It won't happen again."

Casey groaned and pushed Chuck away from him, his voice full of gruff exasperation. "Just let it go okay? Walker will get over herself eventually." He walked away, purposefully bumping his chest into Chuck as he passed, sending Chuck careening into a shelf of discount DVD's.

He steadied himself and watched Casey stalk away, corralling a customer into his orbit near the flat screens again. Considering everything, Chuck thought that had gone rather well. The bruises he got would probably fade in only a day or two.

* * *

Chuck sucked in a deep breath and hesitantly pushed in the Wiernerlicious door. Like usual, despite it being the middle of the afternoon, there were very few actual customers in the restaurant (there was the usual complement of gawking teenage boys). Chuck had no idea how the place managed to stay in business with such few customers. As long as Sarah continued to work there, he knew that they'd at least have steady foot traffic. He couldn't help but smirk at the boys arguing and pushing each other over who got to be first in line. He remembered how he was at that age, although he could never remember being that desperate to see a beautiful woman (he might have just been repressing).

Sarah gave no indication that she had noticed him enter the store, which he thought a little odd as she usually instantly knew when he was around. It was one of the many things he found fascinating about her, her amazing ability to constantly be aware of her surroundings at all times. He moved to the back of the line and waited, a smile on his face as he watched her flit around. She had never been very good at this job, but he found it endearing that she seemed to take it so seriously sometimes. He figured it was just a part of her personality to always try and excel at whatever she was doing.

The line soon shrunk and he was standing in front of her. Her face was set in a faux smile (part of the job), but he could see how her jaw clenched and how her eyes darkened when she noticed him. "I'll have the Wiernerlicious special."

Of course Sarah wasn't fooled. "I'm working, Chuck."

"And I'm hungry." He tried to smile charmingly, his eyes pleading with her to at least give him something, anything. He absolutely hated having her mad at him. It drove him insane, it became all he could think about. He never felt right.

"Maybe you'd rather have a sandwich?"

Chuck winced and lowered his eyes to the countertop. Ouch. He was starting to realize that maybe it wasn't the drinking while on the job that had her so pissed off. But that just didn't make any sense to him. Yeah, they were friends. Wasn't that what they had agreed to? Okay, so Chuck obviously didn't think of her as just a friend, and most days, he was pretty sure that Sarah didn't see him as just a friend either. And yeah, they'd had that tense, emotional goodbye on the helipad when they'd both thought that they might never see each other again, but Chuck couldn't even hold her hand for Christ's sake. They were obviously not in a situation where they could even have a remotely normal relationship. They were permanently lodged in some confusing no mans land of 'they may have feelings for each other but have no idea what to do about it' zone. He had only talked to Eve for a few minutes and she had to know that he wasn't interested in her at all. "I'd rather eat here, actually. If I wanted a sandwich, I'd have one." Chuck began to wonder when deli products became a metaphor for his love life. His life was so weird.

Sarah softened somewhat, her fake smile becoming a little more real. "I can't talk now, Chuck."

Chuck held up a hand. "Okay, I like totally get that, and I'm not saying we should talk about everything right now. I just wanted you to know that I'm really sorry about last night. I don't know what came over me, but I know it won't happen again. I promise." He hoped she understood that it wasn't just the drinking he was talking about.

Sarah sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Look, tonight okay? We can – we'll talk more then."

Chuck beamed at her, his whole face lighting up. He actually felt a little better, like his head didn't hurt so much and he didn't mind the fact that he was still exhausted and woozy. "Thank you, Sarah."

* * *

"Chuck!" Chuck hadn't even set foot inside the Buy More before Big Mike was storming toward him. "Chuck!"

Chuck pulled up short and let his manager come to him. Could he not have even a moment's peace? He could already feel his high from seeing Sarah dissipating. "What do you need, Big Mike?"

"Where the hell have you been? I've been all over the store looking for you."

Chuck frowned and looked past Big Mike toward the Nerd Herd station. There was nobody there. "I was on my lunch break. Didn't Lester tell you?"

"You left Lester in charge of the Nerd Herd? For an _hour_?"

"Well – uh – well he is part of the Nerd Herd, Big Mike."

"You need to show a little more fortitude, Chuck. Sometimes we need to shorten our lunch break to make sure things get done around here. You can't expect those bozos to work without constant supervision."

"But Big Mike, didn't you tell me that I should treat my body like a temple? My temple's gotta eat."

Big Mike scowled and turned on his heel, walking toward the Nerd Herd station. Chuck followed. "I need my senior technician. That's you, Chuck."

"Did somebody call in?"

"Got a call 10 minutes ago; apparently their computers won't turn on. Idiot probably doesn't know where the power button is." Big Mike pulled up near the station and grabbed a work order sheet off the desk. "Here you go."

Chuck took the paper reluctantly, looking it over. The issue in question seemed a little below his expertise. "Why don't you send one of the other guys on this? Even Jeff could figure this one out."

"They asked for my senior Nerd Herder." As if he could see the skepticism on Chuck's face, Big Mike continued, "They recently did a big order. Gotta keep the big spenders happy, Chuck."

"But Big Mike – " How the hell would they even know the difference?

"Sometimes we gotta do stuff we don't like for the job, Chuck." Big Mike spoke like he made these kinds of grand sacrifices every day.

Chuck didn't see any point in arguing any longer. Maybe getting out of the store and doing something constructive would get his mind off of everything. He didn't relish the idea of moving a lot in his current state, but figured it had to be better than falling asleep at his desk for the next three hours. "All right."

Big Mike clapped him on the back and started to walk away. Over his shoulder he boomed, "Oh and tell Grimes to watch the desk on your way out."

When Big Mike was out of earshot, Chuck groaned and gathered his things to leave.

* * *

**Note:** Next chapter, we get into actual plot. Wow! And we mess with time once again. Whoa, McFly! 


	4. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** Again, thank you to my reviewers. This chapter is short, but hopefully sweet. You can blame the movie _Eastern Promises_ for this chapter. The inspiration was too hard to resist.

* * *

_March 20, 2008_

Chuck tried to get comfortable on the couch in the home theater room, but for some reason, every time he adjusted his position, he felt like something was poking him in the lower back. He knew there was nothing there, he had checked three times now. But the prickling sensation was bordering on severe annoyance. It had been there ever since he sat down. He fidgeted again, shoving his hand behind his back to paw at the couch cushion. He bit down on his bottom lip and let out a huff of frustration.

"Stop fidgeting."

"I can't help it. There's something poking me."

"There's nothing poking you, Bartowski."

"There is!" Chuck turned partly around and glared at the cushion in question. He leaned closer and gave it a thorough examination. He still couldn't find anything.

"No job is worth this." 

Chuck spun back around and glared at Casey for his muttering. "Hey!"

"If you keep fidgeting, I'll make sure something really is causing you pain."

Chuck stilled instantly and did his best to stop moving. "I don't even know why I have to be here anyway. I didn't even flash on anything."

"Because the general and Director Graham requested you, God knows why."

Chuck suddenly felt a pit form in his stomach. He nervously looked around the home theater room and desperately wanted Sarah to arrive so she could make everything okay. "Should I be worried?"

Casey rolled his eyes and relaxed back onto the couch, hands behind his head. He looked smug. "Oh relax, Bartowski. This isn't the first time they've wanted to see you without a flash first." Casey grinned evilly at Chuck, a homicidal glint in his eyes. "Besides, if it was something you should be worried about, I doubt that they'd actually tell you about it. They would tell me."

Chuck groaned and covered his face with a hand. That didn't make him feel better at all. Casey enjoyed scaring him far too much. Why did he have to be such an easy target? "I think you enjoy this part of the job a little too much."

"This is one of the few things that make the assignment worthwhile."

Chuck felt like sticking his tongue out at the bigger man, but resisted the impulse. Not only would it be really immature, but Casey was as likely to punch him in the face as he was to ridicule him further. It was best just to let the whole thing drop. Not that it didn't still terrify him that one day, Casey might get such a call that he should be worried about. He knew, had from the very beginning, that eventually, they would no longer have any need for him. The only way he was able to stay sane, to sleep at night, and even attempt a normal life, was not to think about it. It was to pretend as if the Intersect was only temporary (in a good way) and that everybody could just be friends when he was no longer needed. 

"Where the hell is Walker?" 

"Maybe she couldn't get away from work." Sarah. Chuck's favorite person was a much more neutral and pleasant topic of conversation. Chuck could get behind it 100.

"They sell hot dogs."

Chuck snorted. The disdain and disgust in Casey's voice made it sound like the most simple and unimportant job in the universe. "Her boss can be a real jackass sometimes. He's always complaining about how she never does anything right and doesn't meet Wiernerlicious standards. I think it offends her sense of professionalism."

"Jesus, do you two read each other's diaries or something?"

Chuck flushed pink and looked away from Casey. He focused on the flat screen TV in front of him. "It was just something I noticed." Chuck blushed even more at what he'd said. 

Thankfully, Sarah burst into the room at that moment, dressed in her Wiernerlicious uniform. Chuck was relieved, happy, and at the sight of her, even more embarrassed. His face darkened and he looked down at his hands in his lap. It was bad enough he had just admitted to Casey, in a rather vague and roundabout way, that he spent more time studying Sarah than he should (not that he wasn't well aware that Casey already knew this). It was even worse that he felt so naked without her; like he was incapable of protecting himself without her help. It made him feel even less worthy of being somebody deserving of a relationship with her. But worst of all, he hated that damn uniform. Because no matter how many times he saw her in it, despite how utterly ridiculous it was, he couldn't help but find it enticing. And that made him blush until his face burned.

Chuck resolutely did his best to avoid looking at both Sarah and Casey, so he missed most of Casey's caustic greeting, and Sarah's stony reply. "Chuck?"

"Huh?" Chuck looked up to see Sarah looking at him curiously.

"Are you okay?"

Chuck had no idea what to say. He couldn't very well voice what he'd been thinking. So he quickly said the first thing that came to him. "I'm fine. Just not feeling that well."

Now Sarah shifted from curiosity to concern. She took a few steps closer and acted like she was about to reach out for him, but pulled her arms back to her body before she made contact. Chuck was disappointed and looked away from her. "Are you sick?"

"No, no, don't worry. Just a little under the weather, I guess."

Sarah didn't say anything, only continued to look at him. Chuck briefly focused back on her but again looked away. The worried, searching intensity in her eyes made it impossible to maintain contact.

"Relax, Walker, the kid's a hypochondriac. He was bitching about some imaginary device poking him in the back before you came in."

"I was not! There really is something there." Chuck, outraged and thoroughly embarrassed, glared at Casey.

Sarah maintained her concerned look for a few seconds more and then turned to Casey, cool and unimpressed. "Let's get this over with. Scooter only gave me 15 minutes."

Casey muttered something unintelligible under his breath and accessed the communication program. A few seconds went by as the NSA-created encryption software secured the line against any potential intrusions. Both General Beckman and Director Graham appeared on the screen as usual. The five exchanged perfunctory greetings and Beckman took the lead without any preamble. "We recently received intelligence that several members of the Solntsevskaya bratva will be in L.A. within the next few days to attend a U.N. sponsored conference on trade and development for Third World countries." 

General Beckman and Director Graham shifted to the top left corner of the screen, as a slideshow of scanned documents and pictures now took up the majority of the screen. Beckman continued to detail the assignment. "Unfortunately, we don't know which specific members of the organization will be present. Intelligence on that is weak at best, but we think that these two men," and Beckman paused to key up slightly blurry black and white photos of two men in their late 30, "will be there. We need the Intersect to positively identify them if possible." Beckman stopped and highlighted the first picture. "This is Yuri Petronovich." It was hard to gauge size from the picture, but Chuck determined him to be a tall man (at least as tall as himself), broad shouldered, and with cropped hair. "And this is Nikolai Ivanov." The second photo now took prominence, and Chuck found it difficult to take the man seriously. He looked like he belonged more in a library than a powerful member of the Russian mafia (with his wireframe glasses, hawkish nose, and receding hairline). "They are both wanted by the FSB, MI6, and the FBI."

And then Chuck flashed. His eyes glazed over, his body went stiff, and he let out a strangled gasp of surprise. 

A hummingbird. 

A CCC recording of Nikolai Ivanov shooting a man tied to a chair in the head.

Two hummingbirds. 

A transcript of a recorded conversation between Yuri Petronovich and three men only identified as men of undetermined Middle Eastern origins.

A National Intelligence Estimate detailing the potential actions of the Solntsevskaya bratva. It detailed the many crimes both men were suspected of committing. Yuri Petronovich was a known weapons smuggler, as well as dabbling heavily in prostitution rings across Europe. Nikolai Ivanov was a completely different animal.

A humming bird again.

Chuck flashed back to the NIE and felt a ball of nausea settle in his stomach as the list of Ivanov's crimes rattled off in his head. Multiple accounts of murder (two FSB, one CIA, and one MI6 agent were just the tip of the iceberg), drug and weapon smuggling, including funneling Russian military technology to known terrorist groups, extortion, bribery, etc. Nikolai Ivanov was one very bad man.

An ice cream cake, with chocolate frosting.

A European Fire-Bellied toad.

Chuck came out of the flash with a lurch. His head was throbbing in pain, he dry heaved once as he leaned forward, face toward the ground. He had never had such a painful and exhausting flash before. The pain in his lower back was knifing into him mercilessly.

The home theater room exploded into an overpowering wave of sound. There were questions, shouts, demands for answers, coming from all around Chuck. It only made the pain in his head worse. Then a warm, steady hand rested on his neck and stroked the skin there softly. He instantly felt better and was able to suck in some stabilizing breaths. His stomach calmed, the pain in his back dulled to an annoying prickling sensation, and he was able to lift his head to find Sarah crouching in front of him. Her face was relatively free of emotion, but her eyes betrayed her detached calm. She was clearly terrified and her hand on his neck even trembled a little. It was enough to almost make Chuck smile. Croaking out, he said, "I'm okay. Just – whoa."

"What did you see?" Chuck shifted his attention away from Sarah (he would have much rather have stared into Sarah's hypnotizing eyes, but realized doing so would only get her in trouble) to the demanding face of General Beckman.

Chuck wasn't sure how to put what he saw into words. It had not been a revelatory experience so much as an affirming one. "I saw their files. I saw what they've done." Chuck paused and gathered himself to stare pointedly at Beckman and Graham. "We're going to get these guys, right?" This was one of the two things that made the Intersect bearable, knowing that he got to help in getting rid of the scum of the Earth.

Beckman was disappointed, like she had expected much more from him. She seemed poised to ask a follow up question but Director Graham cut in before she could. "Actually, no. Once you've identified them we want a surveillance package put up only. You are to make no attempts to apprehend the targets."

"We're not going to take them into custody?" Even Casey sounded a little surprised. Chuck thought maybe he was disappointed there would be no apparent gun play.

Graham shook his head in the negative and suddenly the TV screen was dominated by a new picture, that of an older man (Chuck guessed him to be in his 60s at least), weathered black skin and white hair. "This is your mission priority." Chuck braced himself for an impending flash but thankfully, nothing happened. Chuck wasn't sure if he should be relieved or worried that whoever this guy was, he didn't seem to trigger a response. "His name is Linus Tor. Tor is an expert in biomedical engineering and was a former freelancer for the NSA in developing direct user interface wetware." Chuck only had a vague understanding of what Graham had just said, and unfortunately, it seemed Graham was in no mood to explain himself. "We believe that the two targets are in L.A. to discuss and commission the development of a kind of cyber bomb." Graham then turned to look at his colleague with a disapproving look on his face, as if to say 'Look what your incompetence has done'. Beckman only clenched her jaw. "It's Tor that we want."

The briefing soon dissolved into minutiae that Chuck cared very little about. Sarah and Casey discussed their operational plans with their bosses and Chuck focused on lessening his pain. They would just tell him what to do later anyway, so he didn't see much point in trying to understand such topics of conversation as tactical deployment, operational protocols, and operational logistics. All he cared about for the moment was figuring out why his back hurt so damn much.

* * *

**Next Chapter:** We go back to the future! Yeah, you better get used to the references. 


	5. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** Very sorry for the delay, folks. I appreciate that so many of you are interested in my story and really want to know what's going on. I wish I could tell you that this delay is a one-time only thing, but I can't. I'm nearing the end of the semester, and I've got so many things on my plate. I'll try to write, but don't expect frequent updates for the time being. Sorry!

* * *

April 24, 2008

It was times like this where Chuck began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, his life could get any more bizarre. He would often come to the conclusion that no, his life had already reached the zenith of potential bizarreness. Of course, he was always proved wrong. His assumptions were always proved incorrect. Every time he thought that this was it, that there was no way it could get any worse, he would find himself locked in a hospital supply closet with an unconscious Bryce, wearing a pair of blood-stained scrubs, while an old man he'd only known for a month tried to convince his sister and her fiancé that he had no idea where Chuck was, that he had only met Chuck once, and that there was no need to contact Chuck's girlfriend or anyone else for that matter because he was sure it was all just a misunderstanding and nothing terrible had happened. Normally, such an example of 'Chuck's Bad Day' was only metaphorical; unfortunately for Chuck, today was all too real.

Chuck pushed Bryce's head off his chest and the man's head lulled to the right. Bryce's nose smushed into the handle of a broom, and his mouth pursed as if Bryce had decided to make out with the grimy looking wooden handle. Chuck had to stifle an inappropriate chuckle at the sight. It was not often he was blessed with seeing his perfect former best friend in an embarrassing situation.

Unnecessary guilt soon got the best of him and he started to work at getting Bryce in a more comfortable position. He pulled Bryce into a straightened pose. His head was now resting against a large container of cleaning solution and Chuck could now concentrate on the conversation going on outside. "I'm sorry, Miss Bartowski, but I really don't know anything."

Chuck hated this. He hated all the hiding and the lying. If it were up to him, he would have burst out of the closet, wrapped his sister up in his arms, and contemplated never letting go. But it was never up to him. It had never been up to him.

"What are you doing here? Where is my brother?"

"I don't know anything about that. I'm only here because a friend of mine was in a car accident earlier this morning."

Chuck snorted and looked at the unconscious man next to him. He rolled his eyes and poked Bryce in his cheek. There was no reaction. He poked him repeatedly. Linus must have given him some serious drugs to knock his friend out like this. "Wake up, Bryce."

Even through the door of the supply closet, Chuck could hear his sister let out a growl of frustration, as well as Devon's attempt to calm her down. Chuck shut his eyes and again had to crush the urge to let his sister know that he was okay. If only he hadn't been so stupid to leave his cell phone lying around his room. He should have known better, should have known that his sister would have never let him missing for a night go. She was way too overprotective for that. He was only grateful that Sarah wasn't with her.

Ellie, of course, was not easily deterred. "I'm sorry about your friend." Chuck could picture his sister staring down Linus: blue scrubs crisp, hands on hips, hair pulled back, eyes alive and piercing, and completely unconvinced of Linus's protestations. "But I saw Chuck's phone. You called him last night, you asked him to meet you. Where is he?"

"I honestly don't know what you're talking about, Miss Bartowski."

"I know you're lying."

Chuck knew that that was the wrong thing to say. Linus was a patient guy, was understanding and considerate, but he really didn't like it when people questioned his integrity. He was more than a little sensitive about it, considering everything that had happened. And Chuck couldn't really blame him for feeling that way. "Look, Miss Bartowski, I can tell you're very upset, and I sympathize, but I really don't appreciate being called a liar."

"I listened to the voicemail."

Chuck cursed and wanted to smack himself in the face for making such a stupid mistake. He knew that he should have deleted the message. "I'm sorry, but I really must leave."

"Don't walk away! I'm not done talking to you!"

Devon spoke up for the first time since Ellie had started her interrogation. "Whoa, babe, calm down."

"I will not calm down! That man knows something."

"We don't even know that anything has happened to Chuck."

"Chuck would never go this long without letting me know where he was."

The pain and panic in Ellie's voice made Chuck wince and feel like throwing up at the same time. Of course maybe that was the sickening cocktail of various industrial strength cleaning solutions all assaulting his delicate nasal cavities at once, but he thought it was more the former than the latter. Either way, he really wanted to leave this closet. He wanted Bryce to stop leaning on him. He wanted to let his sister know that he was okay. Why had he listened to Linus?

"Chuck can take care of himself, babe. I'm sure he probably just lost track of time at Morgan's. Or Sarah's."

Chuck knew his sister well enough to know that she wasn't listening to anything Devon said. "I'm going to talk to Sarah."

Crap. Not good. They'd be screwed if Sarah caught on to what he was doing too soon. He didn't know what to do. He needed to talk to Linus.

* * *

"God, your sister is tenacious."

Chuck nervously glanced up and down the so far abandoned hallway. He grunted as he reaffirmed his grip on Bryce's body. "You don't know the half of it."

"A real spitfire." Linus let out a huge sigh of air as the two of them finally got the unconscious form of Bryce into the wheelchair.

"I need to call her, let her know I'm okay."

Linus shook his head, and rearranged Bryce's head so that it was at a less suspicious angle. "You can't. Nobody can know about this."

Chuck pulled up to his full height and wiped his sweaty palms against his pants. All these months and the cloak and dagger stuff still made him nervous. He sucked so bad as a spy. "I won't say anything, just come up with some excuse for why I can't come home at the moment."

Linus barked out a laugh and moved to grip the handlebars of the wheelchair. "You're a terrible liar."

"Thank you, I think." Was that really supposed to be a bad thing? "That's really not the point though."

"And just what are you going to tell her that isn't going to make her even more suspicious?"

The two began walking down the hallway. Chuck felt self-conscious in his scrubs, especially with the streak of dark, accusing dried blood near his right hip. He couldn't believe what they were doing. It was just so clichéd. He thought this kind of thing only worked in bad movies and campier TV shows. "As opposed to what, just disappearing for a few days?" Chuck shook his head, laughed harshly. "Yeah, that'll not look strange at all."

"We can't – I can't do this if you aren't committed."

"She's gonna talk to Sarah if I don't say something."

"Agent Walker is a little busy right now dealing with other things."

"You think I don't know that?" Chuck didn't mean to snap, but the thought of those other things that were keeping Sarah so occupied made him rage against the injustices in his life. Chuck tried to calm himself. "Look, you don't know Sarah like I do. If she finds out I'm missing it's not going to be pretty." Chuck frowned and tapped his fingers along his thigh. "It's a miracle she or Casey haven't noticed already."

Linus stopped pushing Bryce and grabbed Chuck's arm in a surprising firm grip. "Fine." Linus looked all around him, checking to see if anybody was close enough to eavesdrop. The hallway was still deserted. "You trust your friend? The weird one with all the hair?"

"Morgan? I don't see how that has – "

Linus cut him off. "Just listen, okay?" Again he checked around him. He even gave Bryce a once over to make sure he was still out. "Call him up. Tell him that you are with Agent Walker, and that you both went on some surprise, spur of the moment getaway. Have him tell your sister. Give him some crap about why you just didn't tell her yourself. It's not good, but it'll buy us some time."

"He's an even worse liar than I am. Ellie would never believe him."

Linus glared at him and his eyes stared hard into his own. The message was clear: What do you want from me? Do you want to do this or not? Stop fighting me. Chuck sighed and looked down at his feet. He didn't want to fight Linus on their little endeavor. It was all his idea anyway. "All right, all right, I'll do it. I just don't think it'll matter."

Linus shrugged and began pushing Bryce again. They were about to reemerge into a busier part of the hospital. It was time to see if their ruse would pay off. "It doesn't really need to. It's only got to delay them for a little while."

* * *

Chuck considered his options. There was the needle on the tray to his right. There was a rather large bottle of water to his left. And there were his hands. Chuck had always wanted to smack somebody awake. It seemed like fun, the perfect excuse to smack someone around and not get into any trouble for it. After all, you were only doing them a favor, trying to get them to stay awake while you imparted some important last words to them, or got them to focus on something other than the bleeding gunshot wound in their stomach, or desperately wanted to revive them from near-death. God, he'd been watching too many movies again. He opted for the needle. It was the safest choice.

Carefully, and he did move carefully, as he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Linus had only pointed in the general area of Bryce's arm, handed him the hypodermic needle with some kind of pharmaceutical concoction in it, and said, "Wake him up", then disappeared. Chuck could only look helplessly at the older man's dwindling body, a mouthful of unuttered protests dying on his shocked lips.

With that fear in mind, he pulled Bryce's right arm closer to him. He peered at it intently, like if he stared hard enough, he might be able to see the way the human arm was just like the innards of a computer, all silica pathways, nodes, and circuits. He just needed to find the right circuit. Trying to remember everything Ellie had taught him about first-aid, which wasn't much, he quickly gave up and just poked Bryce's arm, plunging the chemical down into his body.

Gingerly pulling the needle out of the skin, he waited for the drug to take effect. He didn't have to wait long. Bryce's eyes shot open, wild and a little bloodshot. He sucked in a big breath of air and stared at Chuck as he calmed down. "So I wasn't hallucinating."

"Um – no."

Bryce brought a hand up to rub his eyes. "Where's Linus?"

"I have no idea. He was here a minute ago." Chuck joined Bryce in his surveying.

Bryce stopped looking around the warehouse and focused his intense eyes on Chuck. "You should go home, Chuck. This isn't something you should be involved in."

Pushing away from the floor, he stood up and crossed his arms in front of him. He glared down at the man that used to be his best friend. Even now, after everything that had happened between them, after everything Bryce had done to him, he still presumed to know what was best for him. "It was my idea."

"It's too dangerous, Chuck." Bryce tried to climb to his feet from the pile of old and musty packing blankets on the warehouse floor. He made it about half way before collapsing back down to the ground with an oomph. A hand immediately went to his head and he shut his eyes. "Wow. What the hell did he give me?"

Chuck shrugged his shoulders, not exactly feeling like being all that forthcoming at the moment. "No clue. Said it was strong enough to knock out a bull moose in heat, whatever the hell that means."

Bryce waved a hand in dismissal. "You're gonna get killed."

"I'm gonna get killed no matter what I do."

"That's not true. There's still a chance that they may never get a successful field type off the ground."

"I heard them talking about it myself. I saw it. Linus showed me."

Bryce ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth and made a weird face that Chuck couldn't interpret. "Why do I taste pine?"

A picture of Bryce's previous dalliance with the mop popped into his head and Chuck began to laugh hysterically. "No – no reason."

Bryce frowned but shook his head and refocused on the matter at hand. "Maybe Linus got it wrong." Bryce made another effort to stand up and this time succeeded, although he had to lay a stabilizing hand on Chuck's shoulder.

Chuck briefly contemplated shrugging Bryce's hand away, but he just wasn't that kind of guy.

"You calling me a liar, boy?" Chuck jumped slightly when he heard Linus's voice come from behind him. The old man had finally decided to return.

Bryce stiffened and his jaw clenched. "No, I'm just telling Chuck that you might have been misinformed with your information."

Linus only stared at Bryce, neither man batting an eye. It was Linus that broke and adjusted his eyes over to Chuck. "The info is good. I accessed the mainframe myself to show Chuck the recordings."

"It doesn't make any sense. They wouldn't risk the Intersect unless they were sure it was replaceable."

"It is replaceable."

Chuck felt like snapping his fingers between the two, clearing his throat, doing anything to make the two men acknowledge that he was standing right there. They were talking about him like he wasn't there. This was exactly why he wanted to go through with this. He was tired of having no control over his life, tired of having people make decisions for him, like he was incapable of even participating in a conversation that had to deal with his future. They thought he was just some dumb kid, and they knew how to handle things so he should just sit in the corner and wait for them to tell him what to do. He wasn't going to do that anymore.

"I don't care." Both Bryce and Linus shut their mouths abruptly, seemingly shocked that he had interrupted them. "I just want it done."

"Chuck, it's not that simple. It's dangerous and," Bryce's voice dropped to a whisper, "permanent."

Chuck snorted and ran a hand through his hair. "Any more dangerous and permanent than having a computer downloaded into your brain?"

"It's not the same thing and you know it."

"It is to me."

"I sent you the Intersect for a reason."

"I wish you hadn't!"

Bryce stepped forward and grasped Chuck's forearm. His eyes locked onto Chuck's and there was a hint of begging in them. He really wanted him to understand. Too bad. Chuck wasn't interested in understanding. "It's necessary, it's important. I sent it to you because you're the only one who could handle it."

Chuck angrily pushed Bryce's hand from his arm and took a step backward. He was absolute furious. Bryce still didn't get it. "You know what's important? I'll tell you. Graduating from Stanford is important. Getting a good job that I love is important. Meeting a fantastic woman that genuinely loves me for me is important. Having my own god damn life is important!"

"Chuck, I'm – "

Linus pushed in between the two, an impressive scowl darkening his face. "Enough. I don't have time for this. Either we do it or we don't."

Chuck stared at Bryce. Bryce stared at Chuck. For once, Chuck was not going to back down. If he backed down to Bryce now, he'd be backing down for the rest of his life, however long or short it might be. He reached down deep inside himself, where his anger and frustration lie. He thought about Sarah and the change in their relationship. He thought about the constant lying to his sister. He thought about the pain and eminent fear of death he lived with everyday. He wasn't giving in. And he didn't.

"Fine, we'll do it."

Linus only grunted in reply and moved back in the direction he had come.

"But we're going to do it my way."

Chuck just shrugged his shoulders. He didn't care how it was done as long as it was done.


	6. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** In many respects, I suppose this chapter is dedicated to **Go-Chuck-Go**, whose constant curiosity for when I was going to update next, guilted me into action. So thanks for that. Hopefully, you all enjoy this latest chapter. And now I think I'll go crawl back into my hole for another two months. Until then...

* * *

_March 22, 2008_

Chuck parked the Nerd Herder on a side street. He didn't want to test his luck by trying to park on Santa Monica Boulevard at this time of day. He turned the engine off and sucked in a deep breath. He was still a little out of sorts from the night before and he really wasn't looking forward to dealing with a technologically challenged customer. The fact that the service appointment was supposed to be a total cakewalk was the only saving grace of the situation.

Chuck looked down at the clip board in his hand. He then looked up at the brown and gray building in front of him to double check that he was in the right place. Street addresses lined up and he sighed as he opened the door and stepped out into the warm embrace of the day.

He walked up to the office building, taking a few seconds to get his bearings straight and locate the nearest door to the complex. Once found, he looked for any sign that could point him in the right direction of Suite #487. On his way, he slumped, shoulders slung back, hand unconsciously rubbing the same spot on his back over and over again. When he found the right door, after traversing a labyrinth that would have made Daedalus proud, he bitterly noticed that he had just walked up four flights of stairs and an endless series of hallways and the office was located right next to an elevator. He groaned aloud, coughed unexpectedly, and had to settle his breathing. He had never had a hangover kick his ass this badly before.

He rapped on the faux wooden door three times and waited for a response. None came. He knocked again, and still nothing. "Oh come on." Chuck frowned and looked at his watch. He didn't have time for this, he didn't want to deal with this. He just wanted to go home and take a nap before he had his confrontation with Sarah. Still, it annoyed him to let a job go unfinished. He wasn't Jeff or Lester. He didn't quit at the first sign of complications (and he really didn't want to get yet another lecture from Big Mike about lacking motivation or being non-managerial material). He'd always been a dedicated worker.

Instead of leaving, as he desperately wanted to do, he decided to try one last avenue: he grabbed the doorknob. Somewhat surprisingly, it turned and Chuck pushed the door inward slightly far enough to poke his head through the crack. He looked around the barren office for any signs of life. Was this all just some big prank being pulled on the Nerd Herd? There was nobody here.

"Hello?"

There was only the sound of Chuck's voice reflecting off the dirty white walls. This was the office that supposedly held a tech support business? Chuck pushed the door opened wide and stood in the doorway, a confused frown on his face. "This is just great." He let out a growl of frustration. "Of course this would happen."

Then he heard it, a subtle, muffled beep. It sounded like it was coming from a closed doorway to his right, and a flare of hope exploded in his chest. Maybe he hadn't come all this way for nothing (not that he'd actually gone that far, it was only Santa Monica after all). Stepping into the suite and walking toward the closed door, he gripped his clip board more firmly in his hand. He knocked on the door and got nothing in return. Figuring that this door would be like the one he'd just left, he turned the knob and spoke at the same time. "Hello, is anyone there? I'm Chuck Bartowski, I'm with the Nerd Herd. You made a serv- "

Chuck never finished speaking. He immediately collapsed to his knees, a headache exploding in his head like a car slamming into a brick wall. It seemed like his brain was trying to ooze out through his nose, eyes, and ears. It burned and stabbed all at once. The pain was so intense he vomited off to his right before lying down on his side and curling into a ball. The clipboard slipped from his hands and he groaned and writhed, hands gripping large tufts of hair. He began to involuntarily dig at his skull in an attempt to make the pain stop. Before he could even start to recover, an onslaught of images began flashing through his mind. The images were nothing but a blur, moving far too fast for him to even lock on one like he normally would. One image did stand out: A grainy, black and white picture of Bryce Larkin and the man he knew as Linus Tor, leaving the very same building he was in now. The picture superimposed itself as his last waking thought, the stream of images continuing unabated, until his brain simply stopped. He had passed out.

# # # # #

"Wake up."

Chuck felt cool air on his face as he forced his eyes to slowly creep open.

"Wake up. I need to make sure you're still with me."

"What – " Chuck had to stop, close his mouth, and create enough saliva to speak. His mouth felt like a desert, and his tongue was nothing more than a piece of dried bark. It hurt just to vocalize sounds. He tried again, after several seconds of preparing himself for the act of speech. "What happen'd?"

"Good, you're awake. Do you know who you are?"

"Chuck Bar-owski." Chuck winced at the sound of his own voice, weak and several octaves lower than usual. It sounded like the voice of a person that had smoked four packs a day for 30 years.

"Close enough." The voice paused and there was the sound of a moving body and rustling clothes. "Can you tell me the last thing you remember?"

Chuck couldn't remember anything. It was all a fog, and his memories were ill-defined blobs. "No."

The voice (Chuck was able to place it as belonging to a man) clucked several times. "That's okay, I expected there would be some complications with the reconstitution process."

Chuck very carefully opened his eyes. He wanted to see this man that was speaking to him. He had to blink his eyes rapidly to stop the aching that came with exposing them to the air and the light. Chuck couldn't keep them open for long and he had to close them back up before he could get a good look at the man. "What happened?"

A cool hand settled on his face and pried his right eye open. A spotlight appeared and bore down into Chuck's eye, causing him to cry out. The hand let go of his eye and Chuck whimpered as he shut it closed again. The man repeated the same process to his left eye as well.

The hand then moved down to his right wrist and grasped it firmly. Chuck tried to pull his arm free of the hand, but his body was aching in too many places and he felt too weak. He slowly came to the realization that he was tied down in place and couldn't move anyway. "Leave me alone." Chuck didn't care that his voice was too faint to make his words sound anything more than a beg.

The cool hand left his wrist and the calm, detached voice of the man returned. "You seem lucid enough. It looks like no permanent damage was done."

"What – what did you do to me?"

"I ran a diagnostic check on your system."

Chuck's eyes popped open and he ignored the flash of pain that came from exposing his still overly sensitive eyes to the open air. "You _what_?"

Sitting on a simple stool was an older man, dark skinned with white hair. His face was wrinkled and lined, not so much from age as from hard living. Chuck tried desperately to place the man's face, as there was a deeply niggling feeling in the back of his mind that he should know this man, but his brain refused to cooperate. It was still recovering from the assault it had taken earlier.

The older man picked up a needle from a tray next to him and lifted it to the IV connected to Chuck's right arm. "I ran a complete system wide diagnostic on your brain, by activating a series of RDM probabilistic algorithms embedded in your temporal lobe. Then I uploaded a shut down code into your programming to prevent any permanent damage."

Chuck stared at the man in complete disbelief. Everything that he had just said had gone completely over his head. It was too hard to concentrate; dealing with the residual pain from the headache, his parched throat, burning eyes, and the intense fear that was starting to overtake him. "What are you talking about? Who are you?"

The older man sighed and pushed the plunger of the needle down. "I wanted to make sure you were functioning properly. Then I turned you off so you wouldn't go insane."

"Oh." Chuck was starting to feel suddenly sleepy. "Thanks, I guess."

"You'll remember more after you rest. Then we'll talk."

Chuck nodded and let his eyes slowly droop shut. "Okay." It sounded like a perfectly reasonable idea to him.

# # # # #

Chuck woke on his own the second time. He opened his eyes tentatively, but when he did, they felt moist and normal. He blinked to make sure that it wasn't an illusion and then sighed in relief. His head was pain free, his body no longer ached, and he could actually think straight and remember all that had happened to him.

It was so typical of his life these days that when something was going good, another problem would crop up to screw him over in some other way. So while he was no longer clutching his head in agony, he was instead the prisoner of a man who could supposedly manipulate his brain at will and was apparently so dangerous that the NSA and CIA would rather ignore a pair of murderous terrorists than let the man that had kidnapped him get away. How did he always get himself into these situations?

Chuck carefully turned his head to get a look at his surroundings (he was still very nervous about the pain). To his surprise (and fear) a menagerie of wires hindered his movement. Attached to his head, arms, and chest were electrodes. He began to struggle in an attempt to dislodge the wires, but he couldn't move more than a few inches. He was stuck. He continued to struggle for several minutes until exhausted and gave up, letting out a mixed grunt and whimper.

He turned his attention back to his surroundings. At least maybe he could figure out where he was. The room he was in was dark, cold, and huge. There was a faint light diffused around the edges of the building, giving it a kind of glow, but it was still too dim to see much. He heard what sounded like humming computers and the soft sounds of the outside world. There was a bank of equipment just to his right, quietly beeping. He assumed it was responsible for the electrodes. One thing was for sure, and that was that he was no longer in the office building.

He looked down to survey his own predicament; maybe there was something he had missed when he first woke up. He was in some strange chair, almost a recliner, but more reminiscent of a dentist's chair (or a chair from the bridge of the _Enterprise_). His arms were securely tied to the arms of the chair and his feet were held in place by a strap across his body. There was an IV of something hooked into his right arm as well as an electrode on his wrist and upper forearm. Fortunately, he was sitting up, so he had that going for him. At least he'd be able to see what was going on around him.

As far as he could tell, he was alone.

Chuck shut his eyes and took in a long, measured breath. He wasn't going to panic or freak out or break down weeping (even though he desperately wanted to do all three). He wasn't. He could handle this. Casey and Sarah would have certainly noticed him being gone by now and were probably only seconds away from swooping in and rescuing him, so there was no need to break down blithering. He just had a few more seconds.

"They're not coming, if that's what you're thinking."

Chuck exploded his eyes open and scanned around the room until he spotted Linus Tor standing off to his right, covered mostly in darkness. His arms were crossed in front of his chest and he was standing ramrod straight. Chuck felt a pit of dread form in the bottom of his stomach at the sight of the man. What the hell did he mean they weren't coming?

"Major Casey and Agent Walker. That's who you're thinking about, isn't it?" Tor stepped closer, until he was only an arm's length away. He might as well have been on another planet for all the good it did Chuck (he couldn't even really wiggle his hand). His face was impassive and Chuck couldn't read him at all. "I disabled the two tracking devices they placed on you."

"What are you – wait, two?" There were two tracking devices? Since when? And why was he letting himself get distracted from the important matter at hand?

Tor chuckled dryly. "One in the watch and one – well, you probably don't want to know where the second one was."

"They're gone?"

"Yup."

"Why should I believe you?"

Tor shrugged his shoulders. "Don't care if you do. Won't change the truth though." Tor grabbed a simple stool so that he could sit next to Chuck. "Sorry, old knees." He let out a burst of air and his face relaxed and smoothed once he got comfortable. He pulled a PDA from a pocket and studied it quietly.

Chuck stared at the man. This was seriously not good. If Tor was telling the truth then Casey and Sarah really might not have any idea where he was. Could he really be trapped with this psycho? Who knew what he might do to him? This was his worst fear come to life: stuck alone, in some dinky undisclosed location with a dangerous criminal desperate to gain access to the computer stored in his head, and no hope of rescue. Why him? Why did Bryce have to do this to him?

"I'm going to ask you a series of questions. Please answer yes or no."

"I'm not going to say anything."

Tor looked up at Chuck, an impatient frown on his face. "I won't ask you to compromise yourself. I just need to calibrate my machine."

Here was his chance to be brave. Here was his chance to prove, at least to himself, that he wasn't as big a pushover as Casey often said he was. "I'm not going to help you."

"Answer the questions, please."

"No."

"If you don't, I will have to repeat the test from earlier today until I get it right."

Chuck gulped loudly and his eyes widened in fear. Just thinking about having to go through that kind of pain multiple times was enough to make him want to curl into a ball in a deep hole and never come out. "Repeat?" His voice squeaked embarrassingly high.

"Several times. And each time the pain will increase until your brain simply becomes unresponsive." Tor paused, as if to let his words sink in, and then he leaned in close and whispered right into Chuck's ear. "In other words, Mr. Bartowski, liquefaction."

Chuck had heard enough. He supposed there was no harm in at least taking each question on a case by case basis. "Okay, okay, fine."

"Thank you." Tor sat up, a small smile on his face. "Now, we can begin. Is your name Charles Irving Bartowski."

"Yes."

"Do you have brown hair?"

"I'm actually a natural blonde." Chuck looked at Tor with a conspiratorial look on his face and whispered loudly. "I dye it."

Tor rolled his eyes and fiddled with his PDA. "A simple yes or no answer please."

Chuck wanted to stick his tongue out but stifled the impulse. "Yes."

"Are you currently an employee of the Buy More Corporation?"

"Yes." Chuck relaxed just a little. He had no intention of giving away any important information (at least he had the intention of not having any intention), and he figured it was the least he could do to make Tor's questioning difficult. He'd go along with things, but he would try to be as annoying as possible.

"Are you 10 years old?"

"Only in my heart." Chuck took one glance at the displeased and stolid look on Tor's face and sighed. "Fiiiiiiine. No."

"Do you believe you can fly?"

"There was this one time, when I was 7, where I thought I was Peter Pan for a week. I jumped off the roof of our house. Ellie got so angry with me." Chuck let out a quiet chuckle at the memory. He hadn't thought of that in years. "I never jumped off anything ever again."

"Cute story, but a no would have sufficed."

"You're kind of a drag."

"Thanks." Tor pressed a button on his PDA and it beeped. "I guess that'll do."

Chuck blinked in surprise. "That's it?"

"Yes." Tor smiled at Chuck, his slightly yellowed teeth standing out in the dim light. "I just needed to line up my system with yours."

"I guess I just expected more. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I get to avoid the whole liquefying brain process."

"I lied."

"Oh." Chuck looked up at the ceiling he couldn't see. He then laughed out loud. "I should have known."

"Yes, you really should have." Tor put his PDA atop the bank of monitoring equipment. "Now we can get down to discussing business."

"About that – don't you think we could do that under more comfortable conditions?"

"I'd like to, but frankly Mr. Bartowski, I just don't trust you."

Chuck gaped at the old man. "You don't trust me? You _kidnapped_ me!"

"A regrettable action, I assure you, but it was the only way we could have this conversation without any interruptions."

Chuck swallowed and immediately lost his playful attitude. Tor's words brought back to Chuck the enormity of the situation he was in. It suddenly didn't feel necessary to put on a cavalier front. "They'll find me." Chuck tried to put as much confidence into his voice as he could, but he knew he sounded horribly unconvincing.

"They really won't."

Chuck focused his eyes on Tor. "Sarah won't give up until she finds me. Neither of them will."

"I am well aware of both your handlers' tenaciousness and competency. However, I have no desire to hold you permanently and I will be finished with you long before they even get close."

Chuck didn't really like the ominous way Tor had said finish. He didn't like any of this and he was just about done with trying to pretend that he was taking this all in stride. He wasn't trained for this, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to withstand interrogation, how to laugh in the face of danger, or how to get himself out of this mess. He needed Sarah. Where was she?

"What do you want with me?"

Tor picked his PDA back up and began to study it very intently. He didn't look up when he spoke. "It is not so much what I want with you as it is what I want from you."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Tor looked up, a scowl on his lined face. "Let's not go through this pointless game. We both know I know exactly what you have in here." Tor reached out and tapped Chuck on the head. "I think I've proved that enough times today."

"What did you do to me earlier?"

"I told you, I ran a diagnostic."

"How?" Chuck was desperately trying to wrap his mind around the fact that the man sitting next to him could somehow gain access to his mind.

"By a special backdoor program I inserted into the initial source code when I first designed it."

"What?" Chuck stared at Tor in open shock. "When you _designed_ it?"

"When I designed it."

"Then that means – " Chuck trailed off.

"Yes, then that means I created the Intersect."

"I can't believe – I mean – whoa."

"By the way, that pain you keep feeling in your back?"

"How do you know about that?"

"I picked it up when I did my diagnostic. For some reason, some of the Intersect source code is getting buggy. I have no idea why."

Chuck let out a little laugh. He felt like he'd been somewhat vindicated. If Casey were here, he'd probably be rubbing this in his face. He had proof that he wasn't imagining things. "Can you fix it?"

"Don't know. To be honest, it's not a priority with me at the moment."

"Oh right, because of the whole kidnapping thing."

"That's right, and I'm afraid that the back pain is only the beginning."

"It's going to get worse?"

"That's a somewhat limited way of looking at it, but yes."

"And what the hell does that mean?"

Tor looked down at his PDA again and pressed a few buttons, scanning data. "What that means is that yes, it will get worse but at that point, it will probably be the least of your worries."

Chuck shut his eyes and had to swallow harshly in order to stop a whimper from escaping. He was not going to lose control. He was going to make Sarah proud. He wasn't going to break down. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I need your help."

Chuck laughed bitterly and opened his eyes. He looked at Tor with all the scorn he possessed (which wasn't a whole lot). "You have a funny way of asking."

Tor stood up and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a syringe. Chuck's eyes widened and he started to struggle against his bonds. He wasn't about to let Tor poke him with yet another concoction without putting up some kind of fight.

"Relax. It's probably better for you if you're not conscious for this part."

"No!" Chuck struggled even harder. He thought he felt the bonds on his left arm loosening a bit. He wasn't about to let Tor put him under again.

"Sorry, but I need something you have." Tor injected the syringe into Chuck's IV and he slowly began to stop struggling. Soon his eyes shut and his breathing evened. The last thing he thought about before he lost consciousness was Sarah, and the hope that she would save him.


	7. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** Unexpectedly, I got the urge to write more for this story. So here is the latest in this neverending saga, a whole two months earlier than I planned. Hope you all enjoy.

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March 25, 2008

When Chuck came to, he arrived at three very quick realizations.

First, that he was no longer tied to a dentist's chair in some cold and dank mystery room.

Second, that he was alone and feeling relatively in control of his faculties.

Third, that because there were cars whizzing by, the sun was shining, and he was feeling unreasonably warm, he was back inside the Nerd Herder. That was still parked on a side street connected to Santa Monica Boulevard.

Chuck sat up straight, and rubbed a hand across his face sleepily. There was still a bit of haze around his head due almost certainly to the drugs that Tor had repeatedly injected him with. But he was free and back where he belonged: In the car.

For the briefest of moments, he considered everything that had happened over the last few hours had been nothing but a dream. That he had simply fallen asleep before going into the office for the service call, that it was only a few hours later and the worst thing that had happened was that he missed the appointment and Big Mike wouldn't be pleased. But then he looked at the puncture marks on his arm, saw the irritated sections of skin where the electrodes had rested, and felt a rumbling in his stomach, and knew that he hadn't dreamed up anything. It had all been real.

Chuck groaned out loud and slumped backward into his seat. This was just great. None of this made sense. He'd been kidnapped, drugged, and experimented on only to be _let go_? And how was it that nobody seemed to have noticed that he was missing? Chuck figured one of the first things Sarah and Casey would have done when they noticed him gone was find the Nerd Herder. Yet the car was still in the same place he'd left it, apparently untouched. Did they not know he was gone?

With a sudden burst of movement, like he had just been shocked, Chuck started fumbling around in his seat, hands digging into his pockets for his cell phone. Unsurprised, it was no longer in his pockets. He ran his hands over the rest of his body in the vain hope that it had somehow migrated to a different location, but he found nothing. He let out a loud sigh that morphed into a groan and fell forward until his face mashed into the steering wheel.

He stayed in that position for an extended period of time, trying to calmly breathe in and out and think about what he should do. The obvious answer was to find the nearest phone and contact Sarah. They had to be going crazy with worry over where he was. All he had to do was make a simple phone call and everything would be taken care of.

Chuck didn't move.

He didn't open the door. He didn't step out onto the street. He didn't look for a phone.

Face still squished against the steering wheel, he brought both hands up to grip the wheel in the standard 10 and 2 position. He felt his breathing begin to pick up and he had to shut his eyes in an attempt to just block everything out.

He couldn't do it. He didn't want to do it. But he knew he _had_ to do it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake the image of that helipad and Longshore out of his mind. He couldn't escape the all pervasive thought that if Sarah and Casey found out what had happened, their bosses would insist he be thrown in some underground bunker post haste. But he couldn't not tell them. They'd find out soon enough anyway, and it was what he was _supposed_ to do.

He might never see Ellie again, or Sarah, or Morgan. Hell, he would probably even miss Casey. He really wanted to know why his life had to suck so much. He almost wished that Tor had just kept him locked up, at least then he wouldn't have to worry about the unknown future in front of him. He wouldn't have to drive himself insane with thoughts of locked doors, ugly walls, uncaring, stone-face men that watched over his every moment. Tor hadn't seemed like such a bad guy. Chuck moaned and smacked his head against the steering wheel in frustration. What was wrong with him? He was actually contemplating the potential benefits of staying in the clutches of an evil mad scientist. How did things become so twisted?

Chuck snorted and finally lifted his head off the steering wheel. He stared out the windshield toward an uncaring, ignorant world and grabbed the door handle. He sucked in a deep breath and opened the door.

# # # # #

After nearly ten minutes of arguing in really emphatic Spanglish, Chuck finally managed to convince the manager of _La Hacienda_ to let him use their phone, but only because it was a local call and only because he had promised to order a platter of enchiladas (this had been the sticking point). As he was already famished, feeling a lot more achy and weak than he originally thought he was (his back was killing him), and had no idea what the hell had happened to him, he didn't feel like arguing the point with Ernesto any longer. Unfortunately, the smell from the nearby kitchen was nearly driving him insane. His hunger pains were making it difficult to concentrate on anything but food. Just how long had he been out anyway?

Chuck did his very best to put all thoughts of food out of his mind. He had to concentrate on more important things, like not winding up in a bunker or getting himself killed. To that end, the first thing Chuck did was call Ellie. On the off chance that he was whisked away to some nameless government installation anyway, he didn't want to go without talking to his sister at least one more time. Besides, the NSA had surely tapped her phone, so anything he'd say to her would alert them of his status anyway.

As the phone rang, he thought of what he'd say. He couldn't tell her too much, but he had to tell her something. He didn't want her to spend her life not knowing.

"Hello." Ellie's voice came through the phone quiet and subdued.

"Hey, Ellie."

"Chuck?" Ellie immediately perked up. Chuck could imagine her sitting up straighter, tensing, and a hand coming up to play with a strand of hair. "Chuck is that you?"

"It's me."

"Oh my god, Chuck! Where are you? Are you okay? What happened to you? Where have you been!?"

Ellie's questions came out so fast Chuck had a hard time catching them all. He chuckled and couldn't stop smiling at the obvious concern and apprehension in his sister's voice. "Ellie – Ellie – " when Ellie didn't stop her questioning, Chuck raised his voice slightly, "Ellie! I'm okay – at least I think I'm okay."

"You think you're okay? What does that mean?" Ellie became noticeably calmer once he got her attention.

"I'm really, really hungry. Like I feel like gnawing on my own arm hungry."

There was silence on the other end of the line for several seconds. "What? Chuck – I don't understand."

"How long have I been gone?" Chuck cringed at the way the question sounded. Why would he not know? His sister must think he's crazy.

"What?" Ellie was saying that a lot. Chuck didn't really blame her and her confusion. "Chuck, you've been gone for three days. I was going out of my mind worrying about you. I mean, Sarah said you were going to be spending some alone time with her but I knew you wouldn't go this long without at least letting me know how you were doing. That's not you. I knew you and Sarah were probably just getting really involved," Chuck couldn't help but blush slightly at the image that invoked in his head, "but Sarah wasn't returning any of my calls, and neither were you, and Morgan didn't know anything either and I thought about going to the police but Devon kept telling me that you were probably just having an awesome time and it wouldn't have been so bad if you hadn't left without saying anything to me and – "

Chuck laughed and had to stop his sister from continuing. It'd been a long time since he'd heard Ellie ramble on like this; it was much more his forte than hers. "Ellie, it's okay, I got it. I'm really sorry I didn't call you to tell you what was going on myself but I guess I just lost track of time." This was the part he really hated. Still, he couldn't help but be grateful that Sarah had provided him a handy alibi. He only wished he actually were spending time with Sarah or at least had Sarah nearby to make the lying a little more palatable.

Ellie changed gears instantly. "Charles Irving Bartowski, you mean to tell me that I have been worrying like crazy and imagining all these horrible things that might have happened to you simply because you lost track of time? For three days!?"

Chuck gulped and made embarrassing sounds into the phone. Ellie had slipped into what Chuck semi-affectionately called 'Mom mode' and Chuck wasn't very fond of 'Mom mode' (it usually meant he was in some serious trouble). "Um – um – Ellie, what I mean to say is – uh – Sarah and I have just been – uh – yeah." He could not have sounded anymore lame if he tried. He shut his eyes and smacked himself in the forehead. He could be such an idiot sometimes.

"You're lying."

"What!?" Chuck squeaked so loud that Ernesto turned away from the plate of food he was garnishing with a bit of parsley to glare in annoyance at him. Ernesto began muttering under his breath and put the parsley onto the next plate a little more violently than was strictly necessary. Chuck flushed red and tried to move out of sight of the man. "I'm not lying!"

Now Ellie was stern and no-nonsense. "I know you, Chuck, and what you just told me was a lie."

Now Chuck could admit that he hadn't been all that convincing in his affirmation of Sarah's story, but Ellie had never really questioned any of his lies before. Usually she got so happy and enthusiastic when he told her that he was spending time with Sarah that he had to often convince her not to read into things so much. Had he really been that transparent? Maybe the hunger was dulling his senses and making him act stupid (or stupider). "Ellie, really, I just didn't realize how much time had passed. Honest."

"Where are you?"

"I'm in a hotel."

"_Where_, Chuck?"

Chuck blurted out the first thing that popped into his head. "Vegas!"

"You're in Vegas? Really?"

Why did he always feel like a little boy when Ellie got like this? It was as if the fact that he was only a few years younger than Ellie completely evaporated and he was left sputtering and scolded, like a puppy that was being punished for going on the rug. "What? I can go to Vegas." There was only silence on the other end. The disbelief seeping through the phone was smothering. "It was my idea." Chuck knew he was protesting a little too vehemently, but he didn't see why Ellie would not believe him.

Ellie actually scoffed. "Your idea? To go to Vegas?"

Chuck really wanted to know how a conversation that was supposed to be his potential last words to his beloved sister had gone in such a weird direction. "Okay, I admit, it was Morgan's idea."

"Aaaaahhh." That was all Ellie said.

In Chuck's mind, that explained a lot. Ellie seemed to agree.

"I'm really sorry I didn't let you know where I was."

"How come he didn't say anything to me?"

"I made him promise not to tell."

"But he's never been able to lie to me before."

Chuck couldn't help snickering a little. "Maybe you're losing your touch."

"I don't think that's a bad thing."

"I suppose not." Chuck paused and sighed. "I promise not to let it happen again."

Chuck knew that his sister was probably thinking on how to handle the situation. He knew she was either deciding to believe him and let it go (reluctantly of course) or pursue things until she was satisfied. Thankfully, it appeared she was choosing the former. "I just really wish you had said something, Chuck. You know how I get."

"Yeah, and I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Are you at least having a good time?"

"It's been great, but I think I'll be coming home soon."

"No, Chuck, it's okay. Spend time with Sarah."

"I'd love to, but I didn't exactly give Big Mike a head's up about my trip and I'm sure he's pissed." That, Chuck was sure, was almost certainly an understatement as he apparently hadn't been at work in three days and there was no telling how badly Big Mike would take his disappearance.

Ellie only hummed a sound of agreement. Both grew quiet, and Chuck found himself fidgeting. This was it. No point in beating around the bush anymore. "Hey Ellie?"

"Yeah, Chuck?"

"I love you, I hope you know that."

Ellie was silent for a second. "Of course I know that." She grew quiet again. "Are you sure everything is okay?"

"I'm sure." Chuck pulled the phone away from his mouth and whispered quietly, "I hope I get to see you again." He brought the phone back. "I gotta go, Ellie. Sarah is waiting for me to go get something to eat. I'll talk to you soon."

"Okay, Chuck."

Chuck hesitated; he wanted to say so much more but knew he couldn't. He knew that the best thing for his sister was for her to remain forever ignorant. It ate him up inside.

Before he could do something he'd regret, he hung up the phone.

# # # # #

Chuck had only managed to eat two beef enchiladas, with red sauce, and half of his plate of beans and rice before Casey, Sarah, and six heavily armed men in tactical gear stormed into the warm _La Hacienda_ dining room. Chuck had been having a somewhat heated discussion with Ernesto about the benefits of a cell phone. When the cavalry burst in, Chuck didn't care; he didn't look up from his plate of food, instead he continued to shovel it in, all while trying to explain to Ernesto, who was hovering nearby, that he understood the fact that with a cell phone he could make a call from anywhere. He had simply lost his somehow during the course of his day. Ernesto listened, muttered, wiped the same spot on the neighboring table over and over again, and then stated his opinion on Chuck's questionable mental state.

"What the hell, Bartowski?"

Chuck finally looked up to see both Sarah and Casey looking down at him with incredulous looks on their faces. He grinned up at them and with his free hand (the one currently not stuffing his face full of food) motioned toward the chair across from him. "Have a seat. I'm not done yet."

If Chuck were in a more humorous mood, he might have laughed at the completely dumbfounded faces of his two handlers. Chuck knew the whole situation was kind of comical. His two handlers were standing in combat gear, guns hanging limply by their sides, eyes wide, the six men they brought with them were simply milling around the restaurant, and Ernesto was practically screaming at everyone about the intrusion. He had actually struck Casey and Sarah speechless.

"Chuck, what is going on?"

As he had expected, Sarah was the one who sat down in the open chair. He briefly looked up from his plate to flash a quick grin. "I honestly couldn't tell you. All I know is that I guess I haven't eaten in three days and I'm trying to make up for lost time."

"We thought Fulcrum had grabbed you."

"Or that you ran."

At that, Chuck did stop eating. He studied Sarah, the confused and concerned look on her face, and said, "Really? I guess that would make sense." After the brief contemplation, Chuck went back to eating. Between mouthfuls, he said, "Didn't you guys find the Herder?"

Sarah looked at Casey and he grunted in an annoyed tone. "Chuck, we did find the Herder."

"But I woke up in it this afternoon. It was right where I left it."

"Chuck, we found the Herder in the parking lot of a mall in Reseda."

Chuck picked up a napkin and wiped his mouth where a bit of red sauce had smeared across his lips. "That doesn't make sense."

"Bartowski, we don't have time for your usual blathering, so I swear to God, if you don't start explaining what the hell is going on right now, I will personally drag you to the deepest and darkest hole in the ground that you could ever imagine and leave you there."

Sarah's eyes shifted toward Casey and she frowned. Chuck mirrored her and focused his attention on the very perturbed face of the one man he never liked seeing very perturbed. "I don't know what happened." When even Sarah scrunched her face up in loss of patience, he quickly moved to add more detail. "Look, I don't know what to say. I went on some service appointment Big Mike insisted I take. I show up at some office like a block from here, go inside, and next thing I know I feel like a brick wall is falling on my head. When I wake up, I'm in some room, strapped to a chair, and some guy I've never seen before is telling me he wants to tinker with my brain. Then I woke up in the Herder."

Sarah immediately tensed. "Do you know who it was that grabbed you?"

"No clue." Chuck paused, cocked his head to the side and thought. "Well, actually, he did seem kind of familiar." Chuck gathered up a big forkful of beans and lifted it to his mouth. Halfway up he froze, looked at the fork and frowned. He stared at the fork piled with beans and tried to concentrate on what was happening. Something wasn't right. "I remember him saying that he was going to run some tests on the Intersect. That he wanted to check out the code."

"He what? How could he do that?"

"I don't know, but he seemed to know what he was talking about."

"And he just let you go?"

Chuck shrugged his shoulders and went back to eating. He had taken a break for far too long. "I guess. I mean, I'm here aren't I?"

Casey grunted and adjusted the assault rifle slung over his shoulder. "This doesn't make sense. If this guy knew you had the Intersect why would he let you go?"

"How much did he know, Chuck?"

Chuck suddenly froze with the fork in his mouth. He didn't shut his mouth or begin chewing; he simply sat still, staring at nothing. He blinked his eyes slowly and yanked the fork out of his mouth, looking from Sarah to Casey excitedly. "Do either of you have a picture of Nikolai Ivanov?"

Both Sarah and Casey were silent. Chuck watched the two turn to each other and communicate nonverbally, Sarah's eyes full of an emotion Chuck didn't quite recognize. She turned to Chuck and extended her hand, like she was reaching for his, but it fell to rest on top of the table. Chuck sighed quietly. "Chuck, you know what Ivanov looks like already. You flashed on him during the briefing earlier this week. Don't you remember?"

Chuck frowned and rubbed his face tiredly. A wave of exhaustion crashed over him and he felt himself get tugged down. He wanted to sleep. Eyes drooping and slumping down in his chair, food forgotten, he said, "I'm tired, Sarah."

A clearly worried look formed on Sarah's face. "Chuck, you do remember Ivanov, don't you?"

Chuck's eyes closed but he opened them suddenly when Casey smacked him hard on the shoulder. Chuck yawned and nodded his head emphatically. "Yes, yes, of course I remember him. Librarian on steroids."

Sarah looked at Casey again then back to Chuck. "Was it Ivanov that took you?"

Chuck pushed the plate of food away from himself and he grabbed Sarah's hand still resting on the table. Half whining, half yawning, Chuck said, "I'm really tired, Sarah. I want to see Ellie and go to sleep."

"Stay with us, Bartowski. We need to know more about what Ivanov did to you and how much he knows."

Chuck tried really hard to concentrate on the face of the man that had kidnapped him. He knew who the man was, could even think the name in his head, but for some reason he couldn't push the name past his lips. His head began to hurt and he had to fight the exhaustion that threatened to overwhelm him. Why couldn't he just say the damn name? "Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was Ivanov that did it."

Casey muttered under his breath and Sarah looked upset. Chuck couldn't help feeling bad that he had made Sarah so unhappy, but he was finding it too difficult to stay awake to really care. And now he had a headache to go along with his backache; he really wanted to know why his body was fighting so much with him lately.

Chuck was so wrapped up in himself that he didn't even notice that Sarah and Casey had been quietly conversing with each other for some time. They appeared to come to a conclusion, as Sarah walked to Chuck and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Chuck yawned. Sarah tugged on his arm. "Come on, Chuck."

"Going home?"

Sarah shook her head, a slightly sad look in her eyes. "Your apartment might be compromised and we," Sarah paused and swallowed, her eyes moving to look at anything but Chuck's face, "have to report back to the Director and General Beckman about what happened."

Chuck wanted to pull away from Sarah, but her hold was tight and she smelled really good (despite the layers of combat gear and the mechanical tang in the air from all the hardware she was packing). "Sarah, I don't want to go in a bunker. I like fresh air and sunlight and other people and Ellie and video games and – " Chuck knew that he could ramble on forever, so he forced himself to shut up. It was not an easy task.

Casey, who was up ahead getting the other agents assembled and trying to feed their cover story to Ernesto, looked back at Chuck, annoyed and disgusted. "Relax, Bartowski, you're not going anywhere yet. You're going to be staying at Walker's."

Chuck's eyes widened and his head turned so fast to look at Sarah that he actually felt a flare of pain at the movement. "Really?" Chuck couldn't help the hopeful tone of his voice.

"It's just until we get everything sorted out." She couldn't look at him, and her face was a little red. But her hand had slipped from his shoulder to his forearm, and she was gently rubbing the skin right above his wrist. It was a very soothing motion and Chuck was pretty sure that she didn't realize she was doing it. "You'll be safer that way."

"Can I talk to Ellie?"

"I'm sorry, Chuck, but until we get more information, it's probably not a good idea."

Chuck nodded his head solemnly. "Okay."

Sarah wasn't even trying to hide the worry in her features anymore. "Chuck, what did they do to you?"

They stepped out into the warm sunlight and began moving down the street to where two large, black suburbans were waiting. Casey was holding a door open, an impatient look on his face. Sarah helped Chuck climb into the vehicle and then settled in next to him. She pulled him close, almost as if she were afraid that if she wasn't touching him, he might disappear. She intertwined her fingers with his and murmured quietly into his ear.

Soon, they were on their way. The rhythmic movement of the car, the smell of Sarah, the comfortable temperature, all combined to induce sleep in Chuck. He leaned against Sarah and settled his head on her shoulder. Before he even knew what he was doing, he fell asleep.


	8. Chapter 7

**Author's Note**: This chapter wasn't easy to write. My ability to do any kind of, I guess the popular term right now is Charah, is limited to say the least. Thank you those who have reviewed and I hope you like this latest installment. Next chapter should be fun, as I plan on jumping far into the timeline and doing some action, interspersed with some Sarah and Bryce interaction (separately, and perhaps, together as well).

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Chuck leaned heavily into Sarah's side. His right foot dragged slightly along the carpeted floor of the hallway. Sarah had a strong arm wrapped securely around his middle and was more or less dragging him with her instead of simply leading him. Chuck, for reasons completely beyond his ability to grasp, currently had trouble putting one foot in front of the other. Or at least doing so without stumbling around like a drunken sailor.

Sarah hadn't spoken much to him since he'd awoken in the suburban in front of her hotel. She'd reiterated the plan to him as she helped him out of the car; that he was going to stay with her until things settled, that he wasn't to talk to anybody but her or Casey, and that she would do her best to keep him out of a bunker. Chuck suspected, in the parts of his brain that were still relatively functioning, that that last part had been thrown to him as a kind of carrot on the stick. She knew how to manipulate him so well.

"Sarah, am I drunk? I don't feel drunk, but I do."

It was a fair question, and one Chuck very much would have liked an answer to. He had no idea why he was feeling so sluggish and tired. He had no idea why one minute, he was happily stuffing his face with delicious Oaxacan food, and the next, he felt like he'd just crashed into the wall of the light cycle arena in _Tron_. But most of all, he had no idea why he wasn't freaking out, like usual, at the very close proximity he currently had to Sarah. Was he actually so disoriented that he didn't care that she was practically painted to his side? What the hell was wrong with him?

"I don't think so, Chuck." They stopped in front of the door to Sarah's hotel room and she began to fish out the key from with her tactical gear. "I'm very aware of what you're like when you're drunk."

Chuck let out a very loud sigh, and he slumped against the wall next to the door. "Sorry, Sarah. I never said anything, I promise." He sure sounded drunk; his words were sluggish and slow.

Sarah turned to face him, the key half into the lock. Her eyes were strained and her mouth in a firm, straight line. But her look softened and she adjusted his positioning against the wall so that he'd be more stable. "I don't think this is the right time to talk about this, Chuck. When you're feeling better and will actually remember things, then we can talk all about it."

Chuck still wasn't convinced; he believed he needed to convince Sarah now that the conversation with the girl at the bar meant nothing (he couldn't even remember her name). "I don't know why you got so mad. You're much prettier than she is, was, whatever." Chuck shut his eyes and brought a hand up to his forehead. "I feel really weird. Maybe it was something I ate."

With a sudden burst of energy, like he had just been shocked out of his daze by a bolt of lightning, Chuck grabbed Sarah's arm and pulled her to him. She let out a little yelp of surprise and was forced to steady herself by pressing both hands on either side of his body. Chuck leaned closer; she smelled too good not to and he could feel the warmth of her body sapping into his skin. He managed to stand up straight; he swayed listlessly like a boat at sea, but he stayed upright under his own power. "I don't wanna wait to clear this up. You have to understand that I never said anything." Chuck became silent and looked hard into Sarah's spectacularly vibrant eyes. "I don't wanna go to the bunker like this."

"You're not going into a bunker. I won't let that happen." Her voice was a whisper and she leaned even closer to him, their faces barely apart. Her breath was warm and slightly sweet. Chuck imagined his was terrible, considering what he'd eaten for lunch, but it didn't seem to deter Sarah from moving even closer. Chuck moved his right hand to rest on her hip (for balance purposes only).

Chuck softened his eyes, replacing the hard, insistent look with one of hope and affection for the woman in front of him. "Promise?"

"I promise."

Chuck knew that she really couldn't promise such a thing, but just hearing the words was enough to make him feel better. He could feel his worries draining away. He trusted Sarah. He knew that she would keep him safe. He nodded his head several times and reluctantly pulled away, letting out a little sigh as he did so. He thought he saw disappointment settle on her face but it was gone as fast as it had arrived and she quickly spun around to open the door. Once open, her arm slipped back around his middle and she again led him forward.

Sarah walked him to her bed, and with some convoluted and awkward maneuvering, settled him on top of it. Chuck pushed himself up until he was resting on his elbows and watched Sarah move about the room. "I'm on your bed."

Sarah had the slightest hitch in his step at his words, but she continued on with getting a bottle of water and a collection of multicolored pills. "Yes, you are."

"Your bed is very comfortable." Chuck laid down flat and looked up at the ceiling. Almost immediately, his eyes began to droop close. "I'm sleepy."

Chuck felt the bed shift and dip slightly. He felt the cool hand of Sarah settle against his cheek and then move down to his shoulder. She gave it a gentle shake. "Not yet, Chuck. I want you to take these pills first."

"But I'm not drunk. I don't need to take anything. You said I wasn't drunk. Why do I have to take anything? I'm not drunk. I don't need any pills." Chuck was pretty confident he could go in circles forever.

"It's okay, Chuck, these will help you feel better."

Chuck reluctantly lifted up a hand to take the pills from Sarah. He wasn't sure that this was a very good idea, but he figured Sarah knew what she was doing and she wouldn't give him anything that might hurt him. With that in mind, he popped the pills into his mouth and took two large gulps of water from the bottle in Sarah's other hand. He lowered his head back down to the bed and again shut his eyes. It was simply too much work keeping his eyes open for any significant amount of time.

He felt Sarah get off the bed and he let out a little groan at the loss of her presence. Blindly reaching out, he said, "Sarah, don't go."

Sarah's voice was distant, but it helped calm him. "I'm not going anywhere. I just need to talk to Casey for a little bit but I'll be right here."

Chuck turned on his side, bringing one hand up to rest under his head. "I don't want to go in a bunker." He was mumbling in his sleep now.

# # # # #

When Chuck woke up, the hotel room was practically pitch black, with the only source of light coming from the outside world leaking through the curtained windows. Groggily, he slowly sat up and wiped his eyes clear of eye gunk. He ran his tongue around his very dry mouth and automatically brought a hand up to run through his hair. He moved to the edge of the bed and sat up, head in hands, elbows resting on his knees. He felt like the world was spinning, like his head was jackhammering into the ground. It was reminiscent of three days before when he had stepped into that mysterious office.

"Sarah?"

Sarah didn't answer. It was too dark in the room to even see if she was there. "Sarah?" He stood up carefully and made his way toward the closest wall. He'd only been in Sarah's room a few times, and he hadn't exactly paid very close attention to the floor plan. He'd always been too distracted by Sarah to pay attention to such mundane things. He had no idea where a lamp was or even a light switch.

Following the wall, he finally came upon a light switch. He flipped the switch and the room was flooded with blinding light. Chuck sucked in a sharp breath with a wince, and shut his eyes tightly as the pain assaulted him. "I'm really getting tired of this."

Slowly, carefully, he opened his eyes. First to just a slit, so that what he was looking at was a blur of shapes and colors surrounded by a sun-bright halo, then gradually, after his eyes adjusted, he was able to look at the room without cringing in pain. The room was empty, and looked mostly untouched. Sarah was nowhere to be seen.

"Well, this sucks."

Things were not making sense. He was completely confused. He had tried explaining to Sarah and Casey what had happened to him, but every time he even attempted to vocalize the words, something inside his brain threw up a roadblock. He was actually incapable of saying the words aloud. And now Sarah was gone, he had no idea what was happening on the bunker front, he had no one to talk to, and he was alone in a room that didn't even have a TV.

Life pretty much sucked at the moment. But then that was pretty much par for the course for him lately.

There was a knock on the door, causing Chuck to jump slightly. Tentatively, Chuck walked over to the door on his tiptoes so as to limit the noise he made. He looked through the peephole, pulled back afraid he might be seen, and then looked through the peephole again. What he saw was not what he was expecting. So surprised by what he saw, he didn't even completely think through the process of what he did next, which was open the door.

Both men remained silent as they studied the other. Then Chuck blurted out, "You!" He pointed accusingly.

Linus Tor was standing in front of him, wearing dark blue jeans and a black sweater. He had on a pair of wire frame glasses and his hair was perfectly neat. There was a look on his face reminiscent of a smirk, but other than that, he was implacably blank. "Me."

"You!"

Tor shifted all his weight to his right foot and the smirk transformed into a look of exasperation. "Me."

"You! Y-you!" Chuck was gaping and fidgeting and trying to think of what he should do next (like run and hide).

"I think we covered this already."

"What the hell did you do to me? And why are you here?" As he was asking the question, he began to swing the door closed. Tor stuck his foot out and blocked the door from completing its circuit. Chuck struggled for a few frustrating seconds to close the door despite Tor's foot being in the way, and soon gave up trying. "Go away."

"I'd like to talk to you."

"Talk to me?" Chuck stared at Tor in disbelief. "You kidnapped me and messed with my mind!" Chuck tried to slam the door again even though he knew it was futile (let it never be said that he wasn't tenacious). "Go away so I can call my friends and they can make you leave me alone."

Tor chuckled and looked very unimpressed. "You're welcome to try."

Like before, nothing happened. It was like a black hole opened in his mind, sucking every little bit of what happened in that warehouse away. "Gah!" Chuck glared at Tor as angry as he'd ever been. "Why can't I tell anyone about you? What did you do to me?!"

"I'm not sure you want to have this conversation in the hallway."

"I'd prefer not to have the conversation period, but you screwed with the wiring and now it's all haywire!"

"Not any worse than it was before."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Tor looked over his shoulder both ways, checking the hallway for eavesdroppers. "I really must insist that we talk about this in a more private setting."

"And I insist that you tell me what you did me!" Chuck knew he was getting excited, getting loud and, if he hadn't already, would probably start drawing attention to himself. But he didn't care.

Tor sighed and leaned against the door frame. He lowered his voice to practically a whisper. "Your brain is – how can I put this delicately – a bit of a lemon."

Chuck gaped like a fish. "_What_?"

"It's a fixer-upper. A jalopy, a heap, a labor of love – honestly, I can extend this metaphor all night if you need me to."

Chuck held up a hand and glared at the older man. "I get it, I get it."

Tor continued, "Your brain is," Tor paused and pursed his lips, "different." He leaned closer and lowered his voice even more. "You see, where most people have a somewhat relatively limited utility in their temporal lobe and hippocampus, your brain is able to handle ridiculously complex and compact amounts of data. You have access to parts of the brain that handle memory that is far beyond our current understanding of neurological science. It's what makes you such a perfect receptacle for the Intersect database." Tor chuckled, primarily to himself. "Hell, I don't even really understand it and I designed the damn thing."

"That sounds like the exact opposite of a lemon to me."

"You might think that, but you'd be wrong."

"I don't understand."

Tor sighed and his face contorted in consternation. He was silent and Chuck nervously began to tap his foot against the door as a kind of twitch. He really didn't think the man's silence was very promising. Tor's eyes brightened and he began talking. "Okay, think of it like this: Your brain is like a type O star. You're awesome and you do exactly what you were designed to do. Unfortunately, because you're a type O, you burn the hottest and the brightest of all the stars in the sky, and because of this, you also burn out the fastest. And you know what happens at that point."

"Man, I think Star Wars is as awesome as the next guy, but I got a B- in astronomy and that was only because Becky Newsicki let me look at her notes. That was the worst grade I ever got. God I hated that class."

Tor rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling, almost as if he were looking for some higher power to help him through this difficult ordeal. Chuck rolled his eyes in response to Tor rolling his eyes. Soon, both were rolling their eyes simultaneously. He was the one who felt like he should be praying for some deliverance from how bizarre his life was. Tor lowered his eyes back to Chuck and brought one hand up to hover right in Chuck face. Tor made a closed fist with the hand, and then suddenly opened it wide, fingers splaying in all directions, as he said loudly, "Boom!"

"Oh." Chuck's eyes lowered to the ground and all the fight left him. "Oh."

Tor reached out and put a comforting hand on Chuck's shoulder. With a gentle push, he slowly moved Chuck back, away from the door. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Chuck stood immobile, still looking at the floor. "Let me try this again. You're like the world's most sophisticated computer. Your processor is beyond state of the art, you've got an exabyte of RAM, a motherboard that is just plain wicked, and a video card that would make a grown man cry." Carefully, Tor continued to lead Chuck over to the bed. Chuck was too dazed thinking about the implication behind Tor's words. "The problem is, that ever since your pal Larkin sent you the Intersect, you've been overclocking everything. And even the best computers crap out if they're not cooled down sometime."

Tor made Chuck sit down. "You see, the human brain is not supposed to do what you can do. The very nature of your uniqueness is what makes your brain breakdown."

Chuck looked up at the older man, and there was a vaguely kind and sympathetic look on his face. Right now, Chuck didn't care that this man was wanted by the CIA and the NSA. He didn't care that he'd kidnapped him and did any number of screwed up things to his brain. He didn't even care that it was entirely possible the man was lying to him, was only trying to freak him out so that he'd be more susceptible to his nefarious purposes. He only cared about the fact that once again, he was being told the Intersect was doing its best to screw up his life in extremely spectacular new ways. The fear settling in his gut overrode every other concern. He was too tired to work under the assumption that it was all fake. He was tired of dealing with it all.

"Am I going to die?"

"Probably not."

"You don't sound very convinced."

"That's because I really don't know."

"But it's bad, right?"

"Look, kid, I don't have time to go over all this. I came here for a reason and I'd like to get it over with before Agent Walker returns."

At the mention of Sarah's name, all of Chuck's apprehension multiplied. Where was she? Why wasn't she around like she had said she would be? How did Tor know where he was? He had to admit that he admired the man's bravado and chutzpa at confronting him in the home of the very person hunting him, but the fact that Tor was willing to do so scared the crap out of him. If Tor wasn't afraid of Sarah or the CIA, just what was the man capable of? "How did you know where I was? How do you know Sarah won't come walking through that door any second now?"

"You don't spend 30 years in this business without picking up a few tricks."

"Speaking of which, what did you do?"

Tor straightened, his eyes flaring angrily. He bit out harshly, "I didn't do anything!" He was clearly agitated and Chuck shrunk back away from the man. Tor paced. "30 years and this is what I get for my retirement."

"Are you saying they're lying?"

"Yes!" Tor spun on his heel to glare in outrage at Chuck. "You say that like you're surprised!"

This was the most animated he'd ever seen the old man and it was slightly comforting to know that he wasn't always so composed and in control. At least it made him seem more human, and Chuck could relate to that. "I don't know anything about you. Really. I didn't even flash."

"Of course you didn't. I don't exist. You think they'd put me in there?" Tor unexpectedly reached out and smacked Chuck in the head.

"Hey!" Chuck slapped the man's hand away and scooted farther back on the bed in an attempt to put more distance between them. "There's no need to get violent."

"I bet they told you I was some kind of cyber-terrorist, huh?" Chuck thought the question was rhetorical, but Tor seemed to be waiting for a response, so Chuck nodded his head in the affirmative. Chuck's confirmation only seemed to increase the man's ire. "I bet they didn't tell you that I designed the Intersect. That it was my work that allowed even the inkling of a transferrable Intersect to a human subject possible. I bet they didn't tell you I worked for them for more than 30 goddamn years. I bet they didn't even tell you why I'm on the run."

"Not really. I mean, they mentioned these two Russian dudes, and I thought that's who we were going to go after, but it turned out that we're only supposed to 'watch them', whatever that means. They were supposed to lead us to you."

"Decoys."

"Decoys?"

"_Very_ expensive decoys."

Chuck pinched his brow in consternation. He was starting to feel a headache coming on. This entire conversation was becoming way too surreal. "So you have nothing to do with them."

"Weeeell, I wouldn't say that."

"What does that mean?"

"They're part of my escape plan."

"My head hurts."

"Sorry about that."

"About that, are you ever going to tell me what the hell you did?"

"Soon." Tor was slipping into his more taciturn self and Chuck found it exhausting.

Chuck didn't see any point in pursuing that topic of conversation anymore so he switched back to a hopefully more productive one. "Why are you doing all this?"

Tor sat down on the edge of the bed, facing away from Chuck and looking back toward the door to the room. His shoulders were slumped, his back nearly concave. The gray in his hair, from Chuck's angle, glistened and stood out. He looked every bit his age in that moment and Chuck couldn't help but feel sorry for him. He also couldn't shake the image that this could be him in 30 years, a Company man, discarded and used up after they no longer needed him.

"They want me dead."

Chuck didn't know how to respond to that. He wasn't all that surprised. Even he had noticed by now that the CIA and its ilk tended to have a salt the earth policy when it came to dealing with loose ends.

"They want me dead, kid, and they want you dead too."

Chuck froze and he nearly bolted for the bathroom as his stomach roiled. It dropped 20 stories and shattered into a million pieces once it hit bottom. "H-how do you know this?"

"Because it's how they operate. Because it's how they think." The lines in Tor's face creased and contorted. His lips pursed, like he had just tasted something sour. "But mostly, kid, it's because they're giving the order to your precious Agent Walker right now, as we speak."


	9. Chapter 8 Part One

**Author's Note:** First, the apology. I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to update this story. There were a lot of reasons for this delay, but I won't get into them here. My only concern is that this story is now so outdated and the show has changed so much since I left off from this story that I'm not even sure Chuck vs. Project Omaha is even relevant anymore. Also, considering recent events on the show (_Chuck vs. The Dream Job_ in particular) I guess this story can now be considered AU. Second, big, huge, ginormous thanks to **Go-Chuck-Go** who made this update not only possible, but also readable. Fortunately, this chapter was already quite long so I broke it up into two parts, which means it won't be another 8 months before I update again. Heh.

I hope you guys enjoy!

* * *

April 23, 2008

Chuck scrambled on his hands and knees to get behind the gray, large, very cheap metal desk as the bullets continued to fly at him. He leaned his back against an oversized file drawer and took in huge gasps of air. The desk occasionally pinged and dented as a bullet came especially close.

_They had grabbed him outside the apartment as he waited for Casey for their morning carpool to work. He had been up unusually early and he hadn't wanted to pester Casey about leaving ahead of schedule. He was having enough problems keeping up appearances with the surly NSA agent hawkishly watching his every move that he didn't need to draw his attention even more by irritating him and disturbing his morning ritual. He repeatedly circled the fountain in the courtyard, his head down and his iPod softly playing in his ears. He needed the music to think. _

He was shivering but felt like his skin was on fire and that his eyes were going to boil in their sockets. Every joint and every muscle ached. He felt light-headed and unattached to the ground, yet his legs moved like they were encased in concrete as he moved erratically in an attempt to dodge the ricocheting bullets.

_His back had been especially acting up that morning. He had barely been able to move at first, but he had become used to the stiffness and dull ache that he awoke to every morning and was well prepared. Four aspirin and a tall glass of water later, and he was able to shower and get dressed. He stepped outside, the sun already shining and the day warm. He looked over at Casey's apartment, wondering how long he had to wait, and then started his music._

Shooting pains were rocketing up and down his back. He could feel the onrushing tidal wave of a panic attack, and had no idea how to stop it. He was terrified and confused. It felt like thoughts were bouncing around inside his head at the speed of light, making it impossible to hold onto any thought for very long. He was pretty sure that the warring drugs coursing through his system were mostly responsible for his current state, but he couldn't deny that even if he wasn't pumped full of chemicals he'd still be freaking out.

_He had put his iPod on shuffle, not caring what song came up. The song wasn't important, only the distraction. He had needed something to keep his mind off the knowledge that he was getting worse, that any day now the façade would end, that he might have to say goodbye to Sarah forever. The music allowed him to think of more pressing matters, of meeting up with Tor later on in the evening, of figuring out just what the NSA's game was, of saving his life._

This was not happening, he repeated over and over in his mind. Why did this stuff always happen to him? Why couldn't this happen to some other poor bastard? Why couldn't he just have a normal life? He chanced a look around the side of the desk to see what was going on. He barely had time to pull his head back behind cover when a bullet hit the desk just where his head had just been.

_If he hadn't been listening to the music, he might have heard them coming. If his back and neck and shoulder joints weren't randomly locking up on him, he might have been able to fight them off enough to get to Casey. If he hadn't been blinded by fear, he might have understood that there was a reason why Casey wasn't saving him. When the needle plunged painfully into his neck, Chuck realized there were a lot of if's in his life and very few certainties. His last thought before he woke up in the chair had been that "Mad World" was an oddly appropriate song choice for his world going dark._

Bryce jumped and tumbled over the top of the desk to land in a heap of limbs right next to him. Even the jumbled mess that was his landing couldn't stop him from still having the presence of mind to immediately return fire as soon as he hit the ground. Chuck screamed and almost crawled out into the open in an instinctual fight or flight response. When he realized it was Bryce and not one of the alleged CIA agents chasing them, he relaxed just enough to begin hyperventilating.

"Deeper breaths, Chuck." Bryce raised his right hand over the top of the desk and fired three shots at their pursuers. His head kept bobbing up and down over the top of the desk like the mole from a game of Whac-a-mole. The disturbing image of what would happen to Bryce if someone actually managed to hit him in the head sent Chuck into a fit of uncontrollable laughing and coughing. Bryce used his free hand to smack Chuck's back hard and then push his head toward the ground in between Chuck's legs, but Chuck instinctually resisted the motion. "Deeper, damnit!"

_Who are you?_

_What is your name?_

"I'm sorry – I – I can't – help it!" Chuck let out a strangled groan and finally forced himself to put his head between his legs and breathe slower and deeper. This was not happening!

_Where is Linus Tor?_

_What do you know about Project Omaha?_

Bryce ejected the clip from his pistol and slammed in a new magazine, spinning on the balls of his feet to fire twice at a man that had suddenly popped up to their right from behind a cubicle wall, sending him crumpling to the ground with two shots to the chest, and then spun back around to again fire three more times over the top of the desk. The entire maneuver took about three seconds, and that more than anything calmed Chuck down. It was shame that did it, the shame that he was freaking out while Bryce was calmly being Bryce and saving the day once again.

_Have you told anyone about the Intersect?_

_What does Agent Walker know about Linus Tor's relationship with Bryce Larkin?_

Chuck took measured breaths and felt the panic building inside him ebb away. He still was fuzzy on why he was being shot at, but he knew with Bryce around he'd at least have a chance of escaping alive. Bryce was a super agent; he could, after all, do anything. Carefully, very carefully, Chuck got on his knees and peeked out from behind the edge of the desk to look back into the large office space where Bryce and he were taking cover. He could see at least three men ducking out from cover and back again; could hear multiple voices yelling back and forth directions; he became fixated on why people would choose rhododendrons as an office plant.

_Chuck had always worried that someday he'd end up in a padded room. His life hadn't been sane for a very long time so he figured it was only inevitable. When he had woken up strapped to a Tim Burton inspired dentist chair, an IV in both arms and his eyes forced open, his first thought was that this was normal, that it was expected. That's when he was sure that he'd finally lost his mind. It wasn't until the voices started and he could no longer hear the music in his head that he realized that he wasn't in the midst of a delusion._

The violet flowers (rhododendron ponticum, he had no idea how he knew that) were spread all throughout the very large office. Along one long wall was a round, bronze shield. On either side of the shield was a depiction of ancient Greek soldiers in phalanx formation. Above the display were large, frosted glass letters forming the company name. The shield was the size of a child, and Chuck briefly wondered what would happen if the current gunfight caused the shield to fall. Would it break? Could he hide behind it? Could Bryce use it as a weapon? He stared at the shield, transfixed, and briefly contemplated running for it, but knew that he was in no shape to dodge and weave around the many cubicles in his path.

According to Bryce and what few thoughts he could properly tie down, they were in the corporate office for what was supposed to be Aegis Securities, a tech company that developed security and encryption software for database programs. In reality, it was a CIA front, used primarily for the acquisition, detainment, and interrogation of "persons of interest". They had locked Chuck inside his 6' x 6' cell and strapped him to the embodiment of every nightmare he'd ever had as a child about going to the dentist.

_The drugs they had him on dulled his ability to track time. He felt like he slept when he should have been awake and was awake when he should have slept. They didn't feed him, and the only contact he had with any human being beside the voices in his cell were the nameless technicians that changed his IV bags. The one upside to the situation was that he was too messed up to feel pain._

At first they had left him alone. But then they started asking questions and all signs of disinterest disappeared. He never saw who those in charge were or where they were, but they asked him questions over a speaker in the cell. The voice had been artificially enhanced to sound like a cheap impression of Barry White, and they had asked him a number of questions he had no answers to. They wanted to know about Linus Tor; what he was working on, how much had he told him about the Intersect and Project Omaha, where was he? They had asked about the Intersect; not who it was or where it was but how much did he know about its construction? Then they had started asking him about what he'd been doing for the last month, what did he think about his handlers, was he compromised? When he didn't answer their questions about what Protocol Mnemosyne and Algorithm 42 were, they started pumping him full of drugs. The drugs didn't help (because he barely knew anything and certainly nothing about stuff he'd never even heard of) and he kept answering no to the same questions. So they stopped giving him food and stopped letting him sleep in the hope of making the drugs more effective (Chuck also believed they got a sadistic thrill from torturing him).

_How do you feel about Agent Walker?_

_What does your sister know about your work for the NSA? What does she know about Linus Tor?_

If Bryce was to be believed, he'd been locked in that cell for over eight days. It had felt much longer, it had felt so long that Chuck thought it'd been weeks and not only days. When Bryce had busted the door to his cell down, haloed in the doorway by the light from outside, Chuck had thought he was seeing things. He thought they had finally let him sleep and he was now dreaming. He thought the drugs had made him crazy, that there really were five lights instead of four. It wasn't until Bryce released him from the chair, his arms wrapped around him as he half-dragged, half-carried Chuck out of the room and into the harsh fluorescent light of the hallway that Chuck began to think that maybe what was happening was real. The fact that if he'd still been dreaming he'd have conjured up another rescuer entirely was the last factor he needed to be convinced that this was really happening.

_He had spent what few lucid moments he had thinking about Sarah. He focused on her smile, the way it made him feel. He thought about how much he hated lying to her, but he hated even more that she put him in a position where he had to. Mostly, he thought about the still outstanding kill order on him and what it would do to Sarah if she ever had to carry it out. In his non-lucid moments, when he thought Sarah was standing next to him in his cell, he told her he loved her (every time he did so felt like the first time)._

Bryce had injected him with a syringe full of amphetamines and started to lead Chuck to the exit. It was when they stepped off the elevator at the ground floor that everything went to hell. An alarm finally sounded, the stolen radio at Bryce's side exploded into angry voices, and the guards started appearing. The first two, Bryce simply disabled. The next two, Bryce shot one in the leg and the other in the shoulder. It wasn't until they were running down the hallway to the large office space Bryce had offhandedly referred to as the "Bullpen" (where they were now trapped), an unknown number of guards behind them that Bryce gave up pretenses and stopped holding back. If Chuck actually had the ability to think straight, he might have wondered what killing supposedly real CIA agents meant for Bryce, but his jumbled mind allowed him to only care about getting out of this whole mess alive.

The Bullpen was a large workspace where most of the apparently legitimate business of Aegis Securities took place. Primarily filled with cubicle offices, desks with computers, phones, personal paraphernalia, water coolers, plants (rhododendrons), as well as more private offices along the side of each wall, the bullpen proved a haven of potential hiding spaces for Chuck and Bryce on their run to the front exit. There were two exits to the bullpen, one north of them (where they had first entered the large room) and the second south of them. They had had a running gunfight to reach the last row of cubicles setup near the south exit. Bryce had kicked down the cubicle dividing wall surrounding the desk they were currently taking cover behind to provide better fields of fire. The downside was that they were no longer hidden from view so everything they did attracted more bullets.

Chuck felt a rough smack to his shoulder and spun around to face Bryce with wild, buggy eyes. The smack had snapped his focus back to his surroundings. He could feel his pulse pounding rapidly and felt the sweat bead on his forehead. He constantly had to wipe his hands against his pants to dry them. God he felt terrible. Like he wanted to vomit and sleep and devour a 10-course meal and float amongst the clouds all at the same time. Bryce smacked him again and Chuck forced himself to focus on his companion. "What!?"

_What is Protocol Mnemosyne?_

_What happened to Yuri Petronovich?_

Bryce glared at him, like what was happening was his entire fault, and Chuck was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to punch the man that was saving him. The only thing that stopped him from doing so was the buzz of a ricochet coming dangerously close to his head. It was amazing what imminent death could do for your concentration.

"I'm almost empty, Chuck."

Chuck stared at Bryce with incomprehension. He stared at the gun in Bryce's hand. So? "So?"

"So I'm almost out of ammunition!"

Bryce sounded very pissed off. Chuck didn't really understand. What did Bryce expect him to do about it? Materialize more bullets out of thin air? "I'm sorry, Bryce, I left my magical wand in my other pants." Chuck started to laugh maniacally, despite how much he wished he could just shut up.

Bryce rolled his eyes. "Man, you are really out of it."

Chuck shook his head and wiped the sweat off his forehead before running his moist hand through his limp hair. Time to focus. Being out of ammunition was bad, right? This was not happening!

_Where is Nikolai Ivanov?_

_What is Algorithm 42?_

Bryce ejected the clip from his gun and did a quick check of the number of rounds he had left. He pushed the clip back in and hurriedly looked from Chuck to the exit and then back again twice. A determined look came to his eyes, his whole body tensing. He grabbed Chuck's shoulder with an iron grip. "Listen to me, Chuck." He smacked Chuck once across the face. "Concentrate on me!"

Chuck took deep breaths, exhaled, took more deep breaths, exhaled. He concentrated on Bryce's face and his eyes and his words. Everything else faded away.

"Good, Chuck, good." Bryce paused to shoot twice at a man that had tried to outflank them. He missed but the man ducked back into hiding. "Listen to me very carefully. Are you listening?" Chuck nodded. "I only have a few rounds left. We can't stay here. _You_ can't stay here." Bryce's own voice became a little wild. "I have to get you out of here. I _need_ to get you out of here." Bryce fired once over the desk. "So this is what I want you to do. When I count to three, I want you to run to the door. Do you understand, Chuck? Run to the door."

_When Chuck was younger, his father liked to tell him stories. In these stories, a young knight (Chuck had insisted that the knight be a Jedi despite it being anachronistic) went on a quest to a faraway land. While there, he partook in many adventures, none more important than the rescue of a beautiful princess. When Chuck was around 12, he asked his father why he no longer told him any stories. His father, in a rare moment of clear-eyed engagement, had looked Chuck straight in the eye and told him that fairytales never came true, the brave knight didn't get the girl, and heroes always died in the end. Chuck had never thought much about his father's cynicism at the time (he was only 10, he didn't understand), after all the abandonment of his wife was still rather fresh, but sitting in that chair, a cocktail of drugs coursing through him, his father's words had echoed loudly in his mind. He had never wanted less to be a hero._

Chuck's eyes wandered to said door. It seemed so far away. Chuck didn't think he could run very fast with all the conflicting impulses coursing through his body. Bryce shook him and he snapped his eyes back to Bryce's worried face. "What about you?"

"Don't worry about me, Chuck, I'm going to be covering you as you run." Bryce breathed deeply and loosened his grip on Chuck's shoulder. "I will draw them away from you. Once you get out that door, you keep running straight down the hallway. It will lead you to the reception area and the front exit." Bryce reached into a pants pocket and pulled out a set of keys. "Take these. You'll know the car when you see it, trust me."

Bryce was expecting him to _drive_? Chuck was too overwhelmed to really say anything. He just took the keys from Bryce's hand with a blank look on his face.

"Hey, are you still with me?"

Chuck nodded and swallowed harshly. "Y-yeah. But I don't understand, Bryce. What car? What about you?"

Bryce ignored him. "You wait for me for two minutes, Chuck. Two minutes only. Not a second more. If I'm not there after two minutes you start that car and you go. Promise me you'll leave, Chuck."

Chuck shook his head, and fidgeted. "No! I'm not going to leave you here!"

"Promise me, Chuck."

Chuck felt like he had swallowed his tongue. He licked his chapped lips and forced himself to answer. "Okay, I promise." He was too out of it to put up much fight. He just wanted out of this place. He wanted Ellie. He wanted Sarah.

"Good, good, okay listen; this is the most important thing. If you forget everything else, don't forget this: Find Sarah, Chuck. Don't trust Casey, only Sarah. Do you hear me? Only Sarah."

He didn't understand, but he nodded his assent. Chuck could no longer maintain his crouched position, the pain in his legs and back was too great, and he settled onto the floor on his knees. He let out a shaky breath. With the drugs they'd had him on starting to wear off, he knew he was going to be in for a hellish next few hours. He forced himself to ignore his pain as best he could and refocus on Bryce. He knew that somewhere in his mind were the reasons why he couldn't go to Casey but he was too exhausted at the moment to dedicate the necessary computing power on why.

Bryce gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze and then grinned confidently. "Don't worry about me, Chuck, I'll be right behind you."

Chuck nodded his head and moved slowly, like an old man, back into a crouched position. He evened his breathing and got ready to run.

"One."

Bryce moved into a crouched position as well, his entire body tightly coiled.

"Two."

Chuck could do this. He was going to get out of here. He could run. Running was something he was actually good at. He was going to be safe. He pictured that he was on a track and moved his feet into his imaginary starting blocks. He turned his head to smile at Bryce. "Thank you."

Bryce just nodded his head and then stood up, in plain sight. "Three."

Chuck took off with an uncoordinated bolt, almost tripping over his feet. He could hear Bryce firing behind him, and he only looked back long enough to see Bryce running west, toward the shield and waiting Greek soldiers, as he shot off the last of his rounds. Bullets whizzed by his head and dug into the wall in front of him. He burst through the closed door; almost knocking it off its hinges he hit it so hard. He didn't slow down though and was already halfway down the hallway toward the building's front anteroom by the time the door swung close behind him. His lungs burned at the sudden exertion and he quickly felt the nausea building up, but he continued to push himself.

_Where is Linus Tor?_

_What is he doing in L.A.?_

To his surprise, there was no one waiting for him on his way out of the building. Either Bryce had drawn them all toward him or he had already taken care of the front guards on his initial way in. Chuck figured it was probably a combination of both. He looked over his shoulder to see if Bryce was behind him, he wasn't, but he still exhaled loudly in relief when he saw that at least nobody was following him.

Before he knew it, he was pushing the glass doors open and stumbling into sunlight. His legs felt like rubber, his lungs felt like they were full of lava, he felt more light-headed than he had in the Bullpen, and he still wasn't sure what the hell was going on, but he was tasting sunlight and breathing fresh Southern California air. He heard yelling voices behind him and stopped standing in front of the doors, taking off into the parking lot. He ran up and down the rows and rows of cars, looking for what Bryce was sure he would recognize.

What the hell kind of car was he supposed to know on sight? Had Bryce come in a Nerd Herder? Was he driving a Crown Vic? Chuck could feel the panic inside him build. He didn't know what to do! How could Bryce leave him in the dark like this? This wasn't happening!

And then he saw it. He honestly could not believe his eyes. Three rows over and ten cars down, he saw it. Sarah's Porsche. Bryce had come in Sarah's Porsche. He laughed in disbelief.

Chuck went crashing to the ground when the building behind him exploded. Glass from the front windows and doors showered out into the parking lot hundreds of feet. Smoke wafted into the air. The entire front face of the building, up to the third floor, had been blown away. Chuck could hear sirens in the air, hear car alarms blaring, could hear people yelling and screaming as they tried to understand what was going on. For the briefest of seconds, Chuck thought he had been transported to the destruction of Cyberdyne Systems, but he shook his head clear of that thought. Disoriented, he tried to make his way to Sarah's car. He made it halfway and then collapsed back to the ground. His head was killing him. He turned his head and vomited. He managed to crawl forward just enough so that when he collapsed, he didn't pass out in his own vomit.

_Can you construct an Intersect?_

_How long would it take you?_

_What would you need?_

_# # # # #_

Chuck woke up with a wild jolt and a surprised yelp. His right arm banged into the passenger door and his left arm shot forward; his legs kicked forward as well, but the limited leg room of the Porsche's passenger side hindered his range of movement. Almost immediately there was a severe rush of blood to his head and he felt like a dog licking peanut butter as he tried to moisten his lips.

"Good, you're awake. I was starting to get a little worried."

Chuck lolled his head to his left to see Bryce, battered, dirty, and bleeding from several cuts marring his face, but alive, and driving. Chuck gaped like a fish. "Bryce!"

Bryce grinned. "Hey, Chuck."

"You're alive!"

"For the most part." Bryce winced and adjusted his positioning in his seat, putting more weight on his left side.

"H-how?" Chuck broke from Bryce's face and looked around the car, then down at his own body. "Wh-what the hell happened? How did I get in the car? How did you get out of there?"

Bryce grimaced and shifted awkwardly in his seat. Chuck gasped when Bryce's shirt straightened out and he saw a slowly blossoming red spot on his right side. "Bryce, you're bleeding!"

"Yeeeeah." Bryce shrugged his shoulders and looked remarkably nonchalant. "I'm okay, it's nothing." Bryce shifted gears with a grunt of pain and the car burst forward with increased acceleration. "By the way, you might wanna make sure your seatbelt is on."

Chuck checked to see if his seatbelt was in fact on; it wasn't. He fastened it quickly into place. "Uh why? Is everything okay?"  
"Oh yeah, things are great." Bryce gritted his teeth and then smiled weakly. His eyes were narrowed and his neck was clearly tense. "It's just the whole escaping thing is not exactly going according to plan."

"Huh?"

"We're just being followed, that's all."

"Oh, okay."

"Well, more like chased really, but that's just getting needlessly technical."

"Uh-huh."

Bryce's attention was firmly focused on the busy freeway, weaving in and out of traffic, receiving many angry glares, middle fingers, and blaring horns. "You're kinda freaking out now, aren't you?"

Chuck was gripping onto his armrest with a white knuckled grip, and he was sweating profusely. He knew he was on the verge of passing out again. "No, no, why would I be freaking out? It's not like speeding down the freeway with my former best friend that got me kicked out of Stanford, being chased by angry CIA agents who kidnapped and tortured me, while having no idea what the hell is wrong with me, why I was kidnapped, why they kept asking me questions that I didn't know the answers to, and having no idea who to trust anymore, is strange or anything. It's perfectly normal!" Chuck was starting to hyperventilate again. This was becoming a distressingly reoccurring problem.

Bryce opened his mouth to say something but Chuck cut him off before he could say a single word. Chuck's words came out in staccato bursts, "And why the hell are we in Sarah's car?!"

Bryce flushed just slightly and for the first time that Chuck could remember, he saw his friend sweat profusely. Was Bryce nervous? Or was it because of the pain? "Uh, well, I knew that I might need a getaway car so it seemed logical to use hers."

"I can't believe she let you borrow her car. She doesn't even like me _touching_ it." The jolt of jealousy that shot through him was like a bucket of ice water being doused on his head. He leveled his breathing unconsciously, too busy thinking about yet another example of the kind of relationship that he wished he had with Sarah to continue hyperventilating. He was never going to be able to compete with Bryce.

Bryce shifted gears again, slammed on the brakes, pulled hard on the steering wheel to the left, and then shifted again to speed back up. "Borrowed is not the word I'd use."

"Oh my God, Bryce, she's going to _kill_ you." Chuck laughed and yelled at the same time.

Bryce grinned wide and true, his blue eyes bright, his pain seemingly forgotten. "No she won't. At least not once she finds out what I used it for."

"What does that mean?"

Bryce snorted and looked at Chuck with disbelief on his face. He quickly shifted his attention back to the road. "Hold on!"

The Porsche suddenly veered to the right, onto the shoulder, flying past cars moving into an exit lane, before suddenly shooting left across two lanes. Bryce dodged in between two semis and shot out from between them like a cannon. Chuck screamed during the whole maneuver.

"You are beyond insane!"

Bryce laughed and downshifted, setting a more sedate pace; he was now driving as if everything was normal. "Come on, that was fun."

"Sure, like spending a day alone with Casey is fun."

"I'm pretty sure we lost them after that last bit of maneuvering."

"That's great, Bryce. Now that you've embraced your inner Vin Diesel do you think you can tell me what we're gonna do now?"

"The same thing we do every night, Chuck." Bryce smirked at him. "Try to take over the world."

"Hey, no, if anything, I'm the Brain."

"I sure as hell ain't Pinky!"

"Bryce, this is stupid. We both know I'm smarter." Chuck grinned smugly at his friend.

"Ha! I seriously question that assertion. Who here got a B+ in their Discrete Mathematics course sophomore year?"

"That totally wasn't my fault! You got me drunk before the final on purpose so that you could beat me." Chuck folded his arms across his chest and pouted. He mumbled, "Should have known right then that you couldn't to be trusted."

"I didn't force you to take those tequila shots!"

Chuck merely stuck his tongue out at Bryce in response. He sighed when he realized that he was still in pain, still in the dark, and despite the current levity in the car, still totally screwed. Chuck groaned when he tried to stretch out some of his kinks. Not being able to move was seriously starting to cramp him up. "Seriously, Bryce, what are we going to do?"

"To be honest, Chuck, I'm kind of playing this by ear."

"Wonderful."

Bryce turned his head to glare at Chuck. Chuck glared right back. "Look, okay, I wasn't completely sure I'd make it out of that building with you." Bryce actually looked sheepish and Chuck felt a wave of appreciation wash away his animosity, so he dialed back his annoyance. Bryce had rescued him, had risked his own life to save him even when he hadn't known if he would be successful. The least he could do was ease up on him a little.

"That's why I told you to go to Sarah if I didn't make it. You would at least have a fighting chance with her."

"I don't understand. What's going on?"

"Do you really not remember?"

Chuck sighed and massaged his temples. "It's not that I don't remember, it's that everything is so scrambled up here that I'm having trouble just remembering what happened an hour ago let alone over a week ago."

"The drugs should leave your system soon. Things should become a lot clearer when they do."

"So why do I have to stay away from Casey?"

"Because right now you can't trust him; he's liable to kill you as say hello to you."

"But I can trust you?"

Bryce grinned boyishly, that annoyingly charming smile that Chuck often wished he could smack off the man's face these days, and didn't seem the least bit insulted that Chuck had just asked that question after everything he had done. "That's for you to determine on your own."

"Okay." It really wasn't that okay, but Chuck didn't know what good arguing or freaking out would do. At the moment he was kind of trapped in a moving car so it wasn't like he could escape. And he certainly had next to zero chance of actually disabling Bryce. It was best to just go with the flow. He figured that after rescuing him, Bryce should at least have the benefit of the doubt.

"And to answer your previous question, I think we need to meet up with Tor. I think it's our only option right now."

"But you said we could trust Sarah? Why can't we talk to her?"

"No, I said you'd have a _chance_ with Sarah." Bryce frowned at him and reached out with a hand to give Chuck a comforting gesture. "Look, at this point in time, Sarah is more reliable than Casey, but right now that's not exactly saying much."

"Oh."

"Don't worry, Chuck, I've got your back."

Chuck snorted and muttered under his breath, "The last time you had my back, I got kicked out of Stanford."

"What?"

"Nothing, Bryce. Nothing at all."

# # # # #

"Where the hell have you been?"

"Hello to you too, Linus."

"Save the cutesy smarm for another time, Larkin. I'm not blonde and I don't give a shit."

Bryce sighed and pulled Chuck through the open doorway. "I had to see an old friend."

"Bartowski!"

Chuck groaned and stared at the man that had been the bane of his existence for the last two months. "This is quickly becoming the worst day of my life."

"Larkin, why didn't you tell me you knew where he was?"

"Because I didn't find out until this morning. There wasn't exactly time to call you up and discuss all the intricate details."

"Still, some warning would have been nice. I could have been more prepared!"

"Uh guys, I'm standing right here."

"He's here now, stop your bitching."

"I don't know why I ever agreed to work with you."

Chuck waved his hand around, trying to get the attention of both men. "Still here. Still standing right here, trying to figure out what's going on."

"You agreed to work with me because I was the only one who would, you stupid, stubborn, cantankerous bastard!"

Chuck's eyes widened in alarm as Bryce suddenly began to have trouble breathing. His friend brought a hand up to wipe sweat off his forehead and he teetered slightly to his right. Chuck hurriedly rushed to Bryce's side to shore him up, wrapping an arm around his waist. "Damn, Bryce, I don't think you're looking so good."

Bryce laughed weakly and shifted the majority of his weight onto Chuck. "Ha, yeah, that would probably be because I was shot. At least I think I was shot. It could be a stabbing wound, or flying glass, or an explosion, or something else really, really cool."

Chuck glared at Tor and motioned for him to come over. "Do you think you could give me some help here?" Chuck then focused back on Bryce, who was slowly swaying back and forth. "What else could be cooler than being hurt by an explosion while being shot at?"

Bryce chuckled and shut his eyes. "Good point. Maybe if I was – if I was shot by a Stormtrooper or attacked by a Klingon, that might do the trick."

Chuck put his hand on Bryce's forehead and was surprised about how hot it was. "Damn, Bryce, you're burning up." Chuck carefully eased Bryce to the cool concrete. He gently pried Bryce's shirt apart in an attempt to get a good look at the damaged area. When he saw it, he sucked in a surprised gasp. "Oh man, this is not good." Chuck looked away from Bryce to see where Tor was. "Tor, where are you? I need your help!"

Tor came rushing forward out of the darkened warehouse, a large first aid kit in his hand. He placed the kit on the ground and opened it up. He started digging inside.

Chuck was torn away from watching Tor by Bryce grabbing his shirt and forcing his head close to his. "Ylmev voq anyone, Chuck. Ghobe''ach Sarah. Ylmev jatlh vay' to anyone. Sorry. QoS. Sorry for everything. I didn't want it to come to this."

"Move." Tor pushed Chuck out of the way and quickly injected Bryce with something.

"Hey!" Chuck felt a flash of panic at not knowing exactly what Tor was doing to Bryce. "What was that for?"

Tor gruffly responded, "So that I could do this without interruption." Tor efficiently began to clean Bryce's wound.

Chuck leaned back onto his haunches, watching Tor's sure movements. Faster than he expected, Tor had the outer area around the wound clean, with only a little blood obscuring things. "It doesn't look too bad." Tor turned to the first aid kit and pulled out a pair of forceps. "You might not want to watch this part; it's not going to be pretty."

"Do you know what you're doing?"

"Not really that kind of doctor."

Chuck paled at the implication and Tor didn't wait to see if he had moved away or not. He immediately began digging around inside the wound for whatever had pierced Bryce's side. "Right. I'm going to, uh, I'm just going to go."

Chuck turned around and hurriedly scurried away.

* * *

**Note:** There is a method to my madness. There is a reason why this story jumps around so much in the timeline. There is a reason why I didn't immediately follow up on Chapter 8. I just hope you guys can be patient enough to see why. Also, because it's been so long since I updated, many of my ideas for this story have...matured, so I may go back and slightly tweak some of the earlier chapters to coincide better with the new story direction (so if anything in this chapter throws up potential continuity flags, that's why). And yes, I promise, I swear, there will be actual Chuck/Sarah in the next chapter (not the next part, but the next chapter).


	10. Chapter 8 Part Two

**Author's Note**: I told you guys it wouldn't take me 8 months again to update. You can also see, by the length of this part, why I broke this chapter into two parts. This chapter was incredibly hard to write. By far the hardest section of the story to date; everything else should be easy by comparison. This chapter is also probably the most important chapter in the story as well, because placed throughout the chapter are hints about what is going to happen in not only the future of this story, but the sequel I already have planned in my head.

I hope you all enjoy it and thanks so much to all those who've left reviewers. You guys, as the good Captain says, are awesome!

* * *

Chuck was dozing in a chair, his chin on his chest. It was a very light sleep; there was too much worry over Bryce and too much jumbling in his head to be any deeper. His back still hurt, but he'd taken aspirin and it was such a commonplace pain these days that he let it recede to the background. Any rest at this point was a godsend. He hadn't had much sleep while in the holding facility and it was definitely screwing with his mind (even without the drugs they'd injected him with he'd probably still be loopy). A hand landed on his shoulder and shook him gently. He came to full awareness with a start, popping out of his chair and spinning around to face his attacker.

Tor was standing in front of him, a slight smile on his face, hands held up in surrender. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you, but I really should check you out." Tor reached out and with a firm grip, slowly pulled Chuck toward him until he was sitting back in the chair.

In many ways, Chuck felt like a wounded animal, too afraid to let anyone get close enough to touch him. But Tor was right, it was probably best that somebody look him over. He'd prefer that somebody to be his sister, but Tor would have to do. Chuck sighed reluctantly as he sat down. He really didn't want to get poked and prodded, not after the last week of going through enough poking and prodding to last a lifetime, but his will to put up any kind of a struggle was low. "How's Bryce?"

"I managed to remove the bullet and stop the bleeding." Tor shrugged his shoulders and grabbed another chair to sit across from Chuck. Tor leaned forward to get a closer look at him. "He should be okay, but I think he should still get checked out by someone who actually knows what they're doing. I have some ideas about that but we can talk about it later."

Chuck nodded his head and slumped in his chair. The news that Bryce was going to be okay drained most of his tension away. He really had been worried. He didn't want to be worried, because God knows Bryce had ruined his life enough over the years, but he just couldn't stop himself. There was still a part of him that wanted to think of Bryce as a friend. "Good, I'm glad he's okay."

Tor clucked his tongue and brought gloved hands up to Chuck's face. He began poking and pressing his fingers harshly into Chuck's face, turning his head every which way to get a different angle. His bedside manner definitely left something to be desired. "How about you? Are you dizzy? Feel nauseous? In pain?"

"Yes. Yes. And yes. But I took some aspirin earlier so that should help."

Tor nodded his head and then sucked in a deep breath. "How's your back? Your head?"

"It's getting worse, Doc. Every day, it's worse. My head is starting to really bother me now too, almost as much as my back."

"I was afraid of that."

"How bad is it gonna get?"

"I'm not really sure."

Chuck groaned exasperatedly and dragged a hand through his hair. This was the same song and dance Tor put him through every single time. "How can you not be sure? You're the only one who seems to know what's going on. You're the one that told me it was because my brain was starting to deteriorate because of the strain the Intersect was putting on it. This is your stupid invention! You have to know!" Chuck was desperate, he was pleading. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life in pain, or worse, die.

Tor held up a hand to forestall anymore of his desperate questioning. The old man pushed his glasses up off the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. He then brought a large hand up to stroke his chin, his eyes half-closed in thought. "As far as I can determine, the pain scale is moving along a geometric progression."

"Okay, I get that, you've told me that before, but I need details, I need something concrete. How much worse is it gonna get?" Chuck had to grit his teeth as he asked again; restraining himself from attacking the reticent old man in front of him.

Tor sighed and slumped his body. He refused to look at Chuck's face. "Right now, it's manageable with normal pain relievers. But I figure in a month, over the counter drugs won't help. Three weeks after that and even Schedule II drugs probably won't help. My guess is within two, two and a half, month's time, you'll need to be placed in a medically induced coma to handle the pain and at that point, I really can't tell you anymore because I don't know. Worst case scenario is that you eventually die, but you already know that."

Chuck's eyes widened with each blow. This was not possible. It was bad enough that the Intersect had taken over his life, made him lie to his friends and family, and made him a pawn of the government, but now it seemed to be actively trying to kill him as well. He hadn't been kidding earlier; this really was turning out to be the worst day of his life. Now he just needed to walk in on Bryce and Sarah having sex and he could pretty much call it a day. "Can't you do anything? Can't you remove the Intersect? You designed the damn thing!"

Tor cleared his throat and didn't say a thing. He refused to meet Chuck's pleading eyes. Instead, he held up a penlight, which he quickly flashed into both of Chuck's eyes (Chuck was too stunned by Tor's prognosis to resist the move). He murmured contemplatively and pulled Chuck's head down roughly so that he could get a good look at the back of his skull. "Good news is I don't think you've suffered any head trauma."

Chuck tried to push against Tor's hands with his head, but the old man had him in a firm grip. He stared at the dirty warehouse floor in frustration. "That's it? That's all you have to say?"

"I can't talk about this right now, okay? I just – I can't do it." Tor was becoming increasingly agitated and evasive. He violently pushed Chuck's head away from him and moved his hands to fidget in his lap, still looking anywhere but at Chuck. "Look, kid, what do you want from me, huh? I'm not a miracle worker. I can't just wave my hand and make all your problems go away."

Chuck sucked in a sharp breath at the reeling pain that overcame him with Tor's push. He shut his eyes tightly and grabbed the seat of his chair to steady himself. He had to breathe carefully before he felt stable enough to open his eyes and glare at Tor. "But can't you at least _try_? How can you sit there and tell me you won't even try? _Please_."

"I'm doing the best I can, kid. I'm trying to do right by you, that's why I'm still here. Do you think I want to be here? You think I want to risk capture by the government?" He broke off talking and then said, "I really don't want to talk about this."

"This isn't about what you want, damnit, it's about me!" Chuck was getting worked up again so he forced himself to stop yelling and calm down. Attacking Tor was not going to make him cooperate. In a much more level tone, he asked, "Is there or is there not a way to remove the Intersect?" Tor could evade all he wanted but Chuck wasn't going to just back down. This was too important to let his normally passive nature dictate his actions. He would pester the old man until he got a real answer.

Tor once again evaded giving him any kind of real answer, instead ignoring the question altogether. "The bad news is that your pupils are dilated and partially unresponsive, which is probably a result of whatever drugs those butchers flooded your system with. Also, you seem to be dehydrated and malnourished." Tor slowly stood up and groaned as his knees audibly popped. Chuck winced at the sound and grumbled at Tor trying to run away. "I'm going to grab you a couple bottles of water and try to rustle you up a snack so that we can at least get your blood sugar up."

Chuck erratically nodded his head, trying to do his best to pierce the old man with his stare. Tor walked away, muttering under his breath. Chuck couldn't understand what the old man was saying, but if past history was any indication, it was probably a lot of complaining. He didn't know why the old man was complaining, he was the one that had just been handed a probable death sentence.

He wanted to go chase after Linus but knew quick movements were not in the cards at the moment. He needed to rethink things. He needed a new plan of attack. Coming at Linus directly wasn't working; he needed to use another angle. Perhaps he could play off the old man's sense of professional pride. That could work, but only if he threw in a healthy dose of paranoia and doubt. He had to make Tor think that he couldn't do it, that if he didn't do it, then the government would grab him, and this was the only way to make both of them safe. Chuck scratched the back of his neck. He could really use Bryce's help on his plan. Bryce knew Tor best and if Bryce could help him convince Tor to take the Intersect out, then the old man was sure to do it. Chuck refused to believe that there wasn't at least some way to remove the Intersect. As far as he was concerned, it wasn't even a possibility.

Chuck looked around the warehouse for Bryce, hoping to get a good look at his friend for himself and possibly start on his plan right away. He needed Bryce; he needed to see that he was still breathing. He couldn't do this on his own. He wasn't built for this kind of stuff, handling these kinds of situations. He didn't know what decisions to make, how to handle the repeated punches to his gut. He needed Bryce's ability to manipulate people (it'd always been something his old friend was good at). He was terrified of doing this on his own. A coma? He was going to have to go into a coma just to stop the pain?

He had to think about something else. If he thought anymore on this subject, he was going to go insane. He needed to rest his brain for just a little. Switch priorities. Bryce. Think about Bryce. He'd always been better at thinking of others anyway.

He hadn't thought Bryce's wound was that serious, but with the warning and apology that Bryce had been so hellbent on giving him, he was nervous that maybe Bryce had had a more serious injury than he let on. Tor's assurance that he was okay only lessened the worry, not erased it. Maybe Bryce had simply been delirious; that certainly seemed the most likely possibility.

Chuck finally spotted Bryce lying on a palette covered in ratty blankets. Chuck grabbed the seat of his chair and started pulling it over toward his friend. Bryce was pale and covered in a light sheen of sweat. Every couple of seconds Bryce would twitch or shift his body. It was extremely unnerving to see the movements, especially since Bryce seemed so lifeless. Chuck sighed. This was his fault. Bryce was hurt because of him.

Once again, the Intersect had hurt the people closest to him. Okay, so he was still pissed at Bryce for putting him in this situation in the first place, and he was still pissed at Bryce for thinking he always knew better, and yeah, there was jealousy and resentment over Bryce's relationship with Sarah, but that didn't mean he wanted this. He didn't want Bryce (or anybody) to have to risk their life for him. He didn't want people to have to choose between him and the mission (really, he just didn't want Sarah to have to choose). So far his plan to shift his mind away from thinking overly depressing thoughts was not working so well. He ran a hand through his hair and came away disgusted. He really needed a shower. He smelled of sick and his skin felt clammy and sticky from sweat. He was disgusting.

The sound of a chair being scraped against the concrete floor brought him out of his musings and he stared blankly at Tor, who was setting up next to him. Tor had a bundle of stuff in his arms and he sat down on the chair carefully. Tor quickly held out a bottle of water. "Drink this whole thing and no more asking questions."

Chuck did as he was told, what was the point anyway? He really was quite thirsty. He unscrewed the cap from the bottle and took several long gulps. The tepid water felt like a glacial stream as it hit his throat.

"Whoa, whoa, not quite that fast. It'll end up coming back up that way."

Chuck choked on the water and spat some of it out onto Tor and Bryce. He coughed and beat his chest a couple of times.

"See what I mean?"

Chuck glared at the old man and took more moderate sips. "That wasn't cool."

"Sorry." The old man looked anything but sorry. "Keep drinking and eat this." Tor handed Chuck a candy bar. "There is stuff we should discuss."

"There _is_ a lot of stuff we should discuss."

Chuck's eyes widened and he looked down at Bryce, whose blue eyes were startling clear and open. "Bryce, you're awake!"

Bryce started to laugh but his laugh quickly turned into a choking cough. "Yeah."

"Christ, Larkin, you're supposed to be asleep."

"There's a lot of stuff I'm supposed to be doing that I'm not."

"Hold on, I'll get you something. You really shouldn't be awake right now, you've gotta be in a lot of pain." Tor got up and walked over to the open first aid kit. He pulled out another syringe and walked over to Bryce.

Bryce, however, had other plans. He forced himself to rest on his elbows, grimacing in pain when he stretched the skin and stitches of the bullet wound in his side. "No. We need to talk and plan and I need to be aware to do that."

"But Bryce, you – the pain, Bryce. I don't want you to be in pain. We can plan later, when you're better."

"I know, Chuck, but we have to talk about what's going to happen to you now. We don't have time to waste." Bryce sat up slightly, leaning back against a packing crate. "And no offense, Tor, especially after what you've just done for me, but I don't trust you."

"The feeling is very much mutual, Larkin."

"Great, that's great. Everybody distrusts everybody. Can we stop moving in circles please?"

"The kid's right. We need to make plans. He needs to make plans. They're going to be coming at him hard now that he's escaped. They'll use him to get to me."

Bryce nodded and rubbed his chin. "I have some ideas about that but most of them require bringing in at least one other person."

"Like Sarah?" Chuck knew he sounded pathetically hopeful but he missed Sarah. Other than the Intersect complications, she was pretty much all he thought about these days. It had been a long time since he saw Sarah, and that had been days before he'd been taken. He just wanted to see her smile, hear her voice; he just knew that five minutes with Sarah and he'd be calm and able to think rationally about things. She'd always had the ability to calm him down from his freakouts.

"Yeah, like Sarah." Bryce smiled tight-lipped at him.

"We are not bringing in your little girlfriend. Or anyone else associated with the government. Need I remind you that they are trying to kill us?" Tor paused and glared at Bryce. "Well, two of us."

"But we can trust Sarah!"

"He's right, Linus. Sarah won't let anything happen to Chuck."

"Keeping him alive is a far cry from keeping him out of a bunker."

Chuck felt compelled to defend Sarah even though he knew that Tor had a fair point. "She promised me," he said stubbornly.

Tor snorted derisively. He clearly didn't hold Sarah's promise in much esteem. Chuck knew better, Chuck knew that Sarah was willing to go to extreme lengths to keep him safe. He knew that, at least in that regard, she could be trusted. "That's all well and good for you, Chuck, but what the hell about me?"

"Even if Chuck were dead they'd still come at you until you were dead too," Bryce said.

"But if he's dead, that considerably lessens my vulnerability."

"Hey guys, can we not talk about me being dead? Please?"

"Look, Chuck's right. Giving him up is not an option."

"Right now, they're confused. Their operation is in limbo. We should be exploiting this opportunity to make ourselves scarce."

Chuck let out a long, suffering sigh. It was like nothing had changed. He went from one group of people that took advantage of him and treated him like some kind of idiot child to another. Was this his lot in life? To always be at the whim of whoever had the power in that moment? Besides, the two idiots seemed to be missing one key point. "Uh, guys, this is Sarah we're talking about here."

"What the hell is your point, Bartowski?"

Chuck rolled his eyes like the point was self evident. "My point is she's not going to just give up because I drop off the radar. If anything that will just make her more determined to find me until she knows I'm okay."

"They'll reassign her. They're not going to waste one of their best agents on a wild goose chase, that if all goes right, will take them years, if ever, to find you."

"Heeellooooo, Intersect here." Chuck was really starting to get annoyed with Tor. His patience was at the breaking point. First he wouldn't answer his questions and now he seemed to be purposefully obtuse.

Bryce held up a hand, and stopped the back and forth. He moved into a more elevated sitting position, his face tightened again in pain. Chuck was fairly confident that Bryce was a bit of a masochist (just the thought of what Bryce was doing to himself made Chuck kind of woozy and faint). "As much as it pains me to keep saying this, Chuck's right." Bryce grinned slightly up at Chuck and Chuck rolled his eyes in response, but he did smile back. "The only way to get the government to back off is to remove what makes him a threat."

Tor threw both his hands up into the air and stood up. He was clearly annoyed, his back rigid, his arms swinging wildly from side to side. "I already tried to explain it to the kid, but this is something I really don't want to talk about. There's a lot of bad history there, okay?"

"Bad history!?" Chuck yelled in disbelief. "Are you serious?"

Tor looked as angry as Chuck had ever seen him. If he hadn't been so upset himself, he probably would have eased off the old man. "Yes, bad history! A lot of stuff went down that I'm not proud of and would rather not re-live."

"Oh boo-hoo. Let me see, you re-living bad history," Chuck lifted his left hand about halfway up his chest, "me dying," and Chuck raised his right hand above his head. "I don't know, Bryce, what do you think is worse?" It was a rhetorical question that Chuck really wasn't expecting an answer to so he yelled out, "What weak-ass bullshit! That can't be the real reason!" Chuck could not remember the last time he had felt such pure anger before.

Tor's voice wavered and was breathy when he said, "I'm not going to do it. I don't want to do it."

Chuck was taken aback by the old man's sudden vulnerability. It was like a balm on his fury and he calmed down considerably. For perhaps the first time since Chuck had met the man, he actually appeared every bit his 60 plus years. Chuck had always seen Linus Tor as a kind of larger than life figure, mythical, elusive. He had created the Intersect, after all, anyone who could do that had to be special, had to be someone _different_. He had hid from the government, outsmarted them, and done what Chuck often dreamed he could do. That he was really just a scared old man, trying to survive, gave Chuck pause. Driving Tor to a heart attack was probably not the smartest strategy.

"Why not?" Bryce asked. Chuck jumped in his chair. He'd been too distracted by his sudden revelation to remember that there was still a conversation going on around him. Bryce was clearly angry and there was deadly steel in his voice. Chuck felt a shiver go down his spine at the look in his friend's cold and focused eyes. Bryce was plainly not in the mood for bullshit. Bryce would not be as forgiving as him, would not let Tor get away with his stalling and his evading like Chuck felt himself doing (Chuck knew he was weak, but he hated seeing people in pain). This was the side of the man that he would probably never get used to.

"Because it's a monumentally stupid, reckless, and insane idea! Because it's cruel. Because I don't want to do that to somebody I like. It's something I've objected to from the start!"

Chuck leapt up out of his chair in sudden excitement, instantly regretting it. He had to immediately sit down before he keeled over. Still, the sense of victory he felt pushed away any thoughts of vomiting or cringing in pain. "Ah-ha, I knew it! There is a way then."

"No! This is really one of those cases where the cure is worse than the disease."

"Come on, Linus, you said it yourself, the Intersect is killing me. How can the cure be worse than _that_?"

"The whole utility of a portable Intersect is that the data is _always_ there and easy to access. If removing it were as simple as flipping a switch, it'd be a pretty piss poor mobile intelligence platform." Tor angrily stormed around his chair and waved his hands wildly. "This is ridiculous. The Intersect is our only leverage!"

"Leverage?! This is my life we're talking about! My future. My family!"

Tor glared at Chuck and Chuck glared right back, his anger for the old man slowly returning. He wasn't about to let this old man intimidate him. Chuck knew that he wasn't brave or strong, but he would never let the government (or anyone else) hurt his family. That was something he would never stop fighting. And if he tried to use the Intersect as leverage, his family would be the first thing the government went after. According to Tor, they were already making plans to deal with his family if the situation called for it. That was unacceptable to Chuck. He would go to any length to prevent that.

Bryce interjected, clearly pissed at the both of them. They were getting distracted from the larger objective, but Chuck wasn't about to budge on this. "This fighting is pointless if removing the Intersect is not even possible."

"I never said removing the Intersect wasn't possible, I just said it was a monumentally stupid idea that would probably make the situation worse."

Chuck's eyes widened and he managed to stand up stable enough so that he could walk closer to Linus. He didn't want to miss a word of what the old man was about to say. This was it. This was what he'd been waiting months for. He tried to not let himself get too excited but he couldn't help it. "So you can do it? You can get this thing out of my head? Don't hold back on me anymore, tell me everything."

Tor sighed and hobbled back to his chair, where he quickly deflated onto the chair with a groan. All the fight seemed to leave him and he stared at the ground, refusing to look up. "Theoretically? Yes, it's possible." Tor held up a hand. "But I've never done it before; I don't even know if it'll work."

The excitement inside Chuck continued to grow. It was possible! He almost did a dance right there (if his body would have allowed it, he would have), but calmed down when he saw just how intently Bryce and Linus were staring at each other. It was a battle of wills, a silent conversation with a clear ebb and flow. Chuck watched how the skin around Bryce's eyes tightened. He saw Tor flex his fingers into fists and then unclench them. Chuck was fascinated; he had absolutely no idea about what was happening. Then it stopped and Tor looked away. Chuck quickly shifted to study Bryce's face to see if Tor breaking off the staring contest meant that he had won whatever battle they'd been fighting, but all he saw was a deep sadness in Bryce's eyes.

"How?" Bryce asked.

Tor sighed loudly and roughly rubbed a hand up and down his face several times. "I just want to make clear that everything I'm about to say is both completely theoretical and should be considered an absolute last resort."

"How?" Bryce asked again, his voice firm and impatient.

"Okay, look, the Intersect was never initially designed for field work. It was always supposed to be a static system." Tor got up to pace and his voice took on a professorial quality that reminded Chuck of his days at Stanford. The old man walked very slowly, it was clear to Chuck that his own mobility was becoming increasingly compromised as well (Chuck briefly wondered if the old man was sick but pushed that thought away to concentrate on what Tor was saying). "But the NSA wanted more. They wanted to know if it was possible to make it mobile. They wanted it flexible, and they wanted it extremely secure. Essentially, they wanted to know if it was possible to turn it into some kind of highly mobile variant for tactical deployment in the field. That's why Project Omaha came into fruition." Tor sighed and took his glasses off his face, cleaned them with a handkerchief from his pocket, and then put them back. "It was basically a feasibility study. What better way to have a mobile database that nobody from the outside could access than by embedding it in the human brain? So we recruited from all over the country, mainly the military, but other places as well."

Tor's voice got progressively louder and excited. "Think of all the possibilities that a tactical Intersect could provide: Soldiers that could disable bombs or mines during combat, intelligence operatives that would have access to instant intelligence allowing them to make key decisions while in the field, instant decryption, and instant recall of thousands of technical specs for everything from the latest bug to the most obscure security system. The applications are pretty much endless. Our only problem was we were looking for you, we just didn't know it yet."

Chuck spun around to stare at Bryce, his mouth slightly open in surprise. "That's why you got me kicked out of Stanford, isn't it? You didn't want me joining this program?"

Bryce nodded his head slightly, avoiding looking directly at Chuck. "You wouldn't have been able to handle it, Chuck. If they had selected you – " Bryce broke off and swallowed. "I didn't want you to end up like Casey. That's what Project Omaha would have done to you."

"Don't you think that was my choice to make?"

"It wouldn't have been a choice at all, Chuck."

Chuck squeezed his hands into fists and took several deep breaths. Now was not the time to get into old history. Now was not the time to kick Bryce Larkin's ass. "It's not your job to look out for me, Bryce."

"You're my best friend, Chuck. I'm always looking out for you. And I always will."

Chuck grunted and made the tension leave his body. He turned to Tor and motioned for him to continue on. He still needed to know how to get the Intersect out of his head. He would leave Bryce for later (Chuck-Bryce Talk #37).

Tor cleared his throat and started talking again. "The initial testing didn't…go very well." Tor winced and he averted his eyes from either men. "We were using a program designed to be ran on a computer on human brains. Things happened. People died. It was really a happy accident that I was able to come up with a way of translating the Intersect to a biological subject at all." Tor suddenly sat down, his hands massaging his knees. "Still, things never really worked out. The capability was there. I knew it could work if we just found the right subject, but we could never properly map the Intersect onto human synaptic pathways. Apparently, we just didn't have you."

"Great, so I'm special. I'm the 'One'." Chuck threw his hands into the air and said angrily, "Big freaking deal! How do I get this thing out of my freaking head?"

"I'm getting to that!" Tor cursed under his breath. "I tweaked things. I had to."

Chuck shivered at that. Just thinking about the fact that his life was the way it was because some man he'd never met before, years ago, had _tweaked_ a few lines of code, was enough to almost make him swear off computers altogether. It was creepy.

Tor breathed deeply. "Unfortunately, no system is 100 percent secure or perfect. It was necessary to develop contingency plans, so I did. I told the NSA it was possible to remove the Intersect once it had been embedded, but they never cared. They were just so happy to finally have their weapon, and make no mistake, Chuck, you are a weapon to them, that they never bothered to tell you it was possible. In their mind, there would have never been a need for them to remove the Intersect once it'd been successfully uploaded."

Tor's voice was flat. "They don't want you to remove the Intersect, Chuck. You're everything they've always wanted."

Chuck had always suspected that there was a way to remove the Intersect, but that the NSA/CIA had been holding out on him. He had never put much credence in the thought because a larger part of him couldn't envision anyone being that cruel. But he knew better now. He had started to learn that lesson the day Longshore almost took him away. After that, after seeing that they'd rather stick him in a bunker for the rest of his life rather than possibly lose his abilities and knowledge, he had grown increasingly suspicious. That was when he had started taking his own initiative to learn as much about the Intersect, its origins, Fulcrum, and the government plans for him as he could. He had never dreamed that he'd have all his fears confirmed so soon after starting his investigation though.

Chuck briefly looked over at Bryce to see what kind of reaction he was having to all this. Bryce was the one that had sent him the Intersect, he was the one that knew more about the inner workings of Project Omaha and the Intersect program than anyone (at least before Chuck had met Tor). Bryce's face was completely blank, absolutely unreadable, the only discernible indication that he was even aware of what was going on was a slight tightening around his eyes. Chuck sighed. This was all too much. Of course, Bryce probably already knew all about the history of the Intersect to begin with so maybe he didn't need to listen to the history lesson. Freaking Bryce Larkin.

Chuck swung his attention back to Tor and pushed Bryce to the back of his mind with all the other annoying, unpleasant thoughts piling up there. Tor's voice wavered and his right leg bounced up and down. It was clear to Chuck that this was a part of the man's life that he didn't like thinking about or reliving. "You have to understand, the way the Intersect is designed, once it's uploaded, it literally becomes a part of you. You become the Intersect in every sense. It is next to impossible to remove that kind of bonding." Tor sighed and sat down, losing his confident professor persona and looking like a frail, old man again. "But I devised a way."

"How?" This time it was Chuck asking the question. He didn't mean to interrupt the old man, but he found this whole conversation morbidly fascinating.

"What I am proposing is incredibly dangerous and _permanent_. It's like using a WMD on your brain."

Chuck frowned. "I don't understand."

"Total devastation." Tor sighed and then added, "It's the kind of thing that once you use it, you can never take it back no matter how much you might want to because it won't let you."

"Stop stalling, Tor, and get to the point," Bryce added, making Chuck jump slightly. He had forgotten that Bryce was still awake.

Tor snapped at Bryce, "No, damnit, he needs to understand what he's asking. He may think that things are bad now, but the alternative is not much better."

"I think we're all aware of the risks, Tor."

Chuck glanced at Bryce and was surprised at the irritation on the man's face. He was acting like he'd heard all this before and just wanted to get to the good parts. Did Bryce know something he didn't (when _didn't_ Bryce know more stuff than him?)? And what the hell did Bryce mean by saying that we were all aware of the risks? Chuck sure as hell wasn't aware of all the risks. He had no freaking clue. How could Bryce know if he didn't know? Chuck narrowed his eyes and made it a point to watch Bryce more carefully from now on.

"I inserted into the basic Intersect code a Trojan horse that when the brain is stimulated in a certain way, emulating what is perceived as a normal Intersect upload, it instead launches what I like to call a tabula rasa."

"You did _what_?" Chuck gaped.

"A tabula rasa, a blank slate. Don't they teach Latin in schools anymore?"

"Okay, first, I knew what it meant, and second, are you serious? You can do that?"

"Extremely." Tor opened his mouth to say something but closed it before he did. He quickly looked at Bryce and then said, "Make no mistake, Chuck, I'm not telling you this because it's something I want you to do. In fact, I think this is the absolutely last thing you should consider. Giving yourself up to the government to live in a bunker is something you should consider first before this because at least then you'd still be you."

Chuck nodded his head and swallowed. He was starting to finally grasp the meaning behind Tor's words and the implication terrified him. "I understand, but I want to know more. I have to know more, Linus. I've wanted this out of my head since the first second I realized it was there. I am willing to do just about anything to do that."

"He may not have any choice, Linus." Bryce looked a lot calmer now, his face softer and more placid. He was breathing shallow, however, and Chuck wondered if his injury was finally starting to get to him. Maybe that's why Bryce had been acting so annoyed during the conversation. He was in pain and he just wanted to get things over with so that he could rest? It was certainly possible.

"The plan, if we were to do it, would call for my specialized program that I created to be first activated and then uploaded, much like the Intersect was initially uploaded into your brain, while piggybacking along a high intensity spike directly into your hippocampus." Chuck's eyes widened. "This spike will initiate a cascade reaction that will result in a complete system wide wipe of everything."

"That's – that's insane."

"You have no idea how true that is."

"But, Tor – Linus, you can really do that?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"And that will remove the Interect?"

"Like it was never there."

Bryce's eyes were half closed and his speech was slurred when he interjected, "That's not everything, is it?"

"Like any procedure that affects the brain, there are significant consequences."

Chuck gulped and rubbed sweaty palms on his pants. "Like what?"

"Like think of it as completely wiping a computer hard drive and then rebooting it with a very basic operating system." Tor paused and then said quietly, "Your memories would be gone." Tor slashed through the air with his hand, like he was chopping away parts of Chuck's mind. "Your childhood – gone. High school – gone. College – gone." Tor's voice shot out cold, flat, unflinching. "Your family – gone. Favorite movie – gone. Agent Walker – gone."

Chuck floundered for his chair, arm outstretched behind him in frantic search, almost falling onto the floor. It was only a last second fall grab with his hand that allowed him to pull the chair close enough so that he could settle onto it. "All of them?" He didn't even flinch when his voice screeched.

"It's the only way." To crossed his arms across his chest. All the anger seemed to have drained from the older man's body. He was actually kind and gentle when he explained, "You see, the way the Intersect works is that it attaches its data onto your memories. Like how when you think tree, your mind automatically provides memories of trees that you've seen in your life. It frames the concept of tree in ways your mind can interpret. The Intersect is no different." Tor was no longer looking down at Chuck, but was now staring at some unseen point in the darkened warehouse. "When you see a tattoo or hear a voice or see a face, the Intersect recalls the proper frame of reference for you to interpret that tattoo or voice or face in the right context. The only way to stop that process from happening is to get rid of every scrap of information that it might one day dredge up."

"So you're saying that I'm going to lose all of my memories?"

"Not quite." Chuck's eyes lit up in hope, but that hope was quickly dashed by Tor's next words. "You'll almost certainly remember basic motor functions. That kind of muscle memory is almost impossible to remove, at least not without significant physical damage to the brain." Tor lifted up a hand and began ticking off fingers. "You should remember how to walk, how to use the bathroom, how to talk, although your language skills will be rudimentary at best. If you're really lucky, you might even remember how to tie your shoes."

"Oh boy, lucky me," Chuck said sarcastically.

Tor was not amused; he frowned, his forehead scrunching up. "You think I'm being facetious, but I'm completely serious. Remembering something like that _would_ be lucky."

Chuck laughed bitterly. "This is your great cure? Give me amnesia?" He snorted and got up to walk away from the two men, but stopped himself before he got too far. He wanted to run, he really did, but he knew that he couldn't. He had to face this. This is what he'd wanted; he couldn't hide now just because he didn't like what he was hearing. "When did my life turn into a sci-fi cliché?" He turned away from Tor and Bryce, staring into the darkened warehouse.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see who it was. Tor was behind him, a kind and understanding look on his face. His eyes had lost their usual harshness and for one of the few times since Chuck had met him, he felt like maybe Tor wasn't here to screw him over after all. "It's not all bad news, Chuck. Yes, you'll lose your memories, but you will make new ones. Ones, hopefully, free of government influence. If you no longer have the Intersect, and can't even remember any of their secrets, then they'll have no need to come after you." Tor squeezed his shoulder and lowered his voice to a whisper. "You'll learn fast too. What took you 18 years to learn before in order to be a practically functional person, might only take you two. With your brain, it might even take less than that."

"What, is that supposed to make me feel better?" Chuck harshly brushed Tor's hand off his shoulder. It was no longer a comforting weight, but more mocking and patronizing. It was only a reminder of what he'd lose. "So that's great, Doc, I'll learn back all the useless stuff but never have any part of what makes me me." There was no way he was going to do this. What would be the point? He'd essentially be dead anyway.

Tor took a step away from him but Chuck didn't turn around. "That's why you have to think long and hard about this, Chuck. You have to weigh it against the alternative. Maybe it's possible to rescind the kill order. Maybe they'll forget everything that's happened these few months and not stuff you in a bunker somewhere, never to see your family or friends again. Even if that's all true, you'll never be free of them. They'll always want something more from you. Trust me, I know."

Tor continued on; this time his voice sounding far away, "You have to decide if this is the life you want, with all its trappings, or if you want to go back to where everything is normal. To where _you_ were normal."

Chuck could hear Tor and Bryce talking quietly behind him. He didn't care what they were saying. He could only think about Ellie and Morgan and Devon and Sarah. He could only think about how he, Chuck Bartowski, would be gone forever if what Tor was saying was true. He didn't know what to do. He missed Sarah.

* * *

**Note**: Okay, so good news and bad news. Bad news first: I'm going to NYC in mid-May for an important career opportunity so I will probably be focusing on preparing for that for the next month or so, so it's unlikely I'll update again before then. I know, I know, I'm an asshole. Sorry guys! Now for the good news: Next chapter will be _very_ heavy on the Charah. Also, it's a really really really good career opportunity so I'm happy. Heh.


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